L.A. Raeven "Ideal Individuals"
Channel: L.A. Art Documents
Date: 2011-06-27

L.A. Raeven "Ideal Individuals"
Salon MoCAB, Belgrade
Museum of Contemporary Art
March 11 -- April 11, 2011

In 2001, the L.A. Raeven submitted a personal ad to the Guardianinviting "Ideal Individuals" to apply to participate in their investigation on "future lifestyles, changes in society and current trends in fashion and advertising." This act could have been taken for what is a common strategy in participatory and relational art practice, whereby artists try to find "actors" for their work. However, the project triggered a completely different public reaction after the newspaper simply declined to publish the ad. What was so "odd" in the ad that provoked such a reaction of censorship were the physical requirements asked of the candidates for an "Ideal Individual": seventeen-inch (43 cm) waist, no full breast development, underdeveloped secondary sex characteristics, unusual eating habits, a controlled daily schedule, at least one practical inability, etc.
 The search for an "Ideal Individual" initiated by the L.A. Raeven and the response from the Guardian opened up many puzzling issues related to the social construction of the ideal body in different historical and cultural contexts. It also raised the question of the public reception of a "normal" and "healthy" body, and its distinction from one that is not. Finally, it disclosed the role of the fashion industry, with its global outreach, in setting trends and deeply affecting consumers, particularly teenagers looking to models for body ideals.
From that project onwards the artistic duo L.A. Raeven have been staging situations which question Western ideals of male and female beauty and corresponding patterns of consumption and the consequence it has on eating disorders of teenagers (Kelly). In their projects comprising of videos, photographs, drawings, and collages they record the obsession with the perfect, fashionable body, as well as the way in which male and female ideals of beauty are used in the marketing strategies of consumer society. L.A. Raeven have staged numerous performances and situations in which they expose young people to the torments models go through during auditions for fashion shows or dancers experience while auditioning for ballet schools (Nature's Choice).
The set of issues pertaining to the body as aesthetic ideal and site of the cultural construction of identity became even more complex when L.A. Raeven started to appear in their own works (Wild Zone 1). At that point, their own bodies and identities became more explicitly the locus of their art, and a primary focus of its public reception. By exposing their own thin bodies to public view, L.A. Raeven radicalized their artistic position and engaged several issues relating to identity and embodiment, including how identity could be enacted, negotiated, or subverted through bodily practices. They thus made visible how contemporary identities are constructed through and in the body, and the tension between self-fashioning and the constraints of corporeality.
The new topic L.A. Raeven brought to the fore with their appearance in their works was their own relationship and identity as twins, their behaviour dynamics, which became a focal point of several works likeA Dream and Mindless Living. 
Liesbeth and Angelique Raeven claim that they wish they were never born as twins. Yet in their work they are continuously thematizing all aspects of twinhood, addressing their need for individuation and differentiation in collision with the fear and difficulties of becoming truly an individual, as well as the competition, jealousy, and love-have relationship caused by undeveloped individuality.
The MoCAB Salon will be presenting a selection of six L.A Raeven's works in the media of video installations, drawings, collages, and photos from 2000 to the present.