Self Love—“Love yourself.” It’s an undeniably great phrase. Regardless of time, place, or culture, numerous people—from religious figures and philosophers to pop stars—those so called “The Greats” have all preached the virtues of self love. Like Laozi’s words “Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts one,” continuous emphasis on the importance of self love has established it as the ideal “lifestyle” nowadays, with well-being, a healthy routine of caring for both body and mind, as its foundation. Get ready with me to go to yoga: Light up a stick of Nag Champa incense, put on a head-to-toe Lululemon fit, and learn asanas from an app that costs $14.99 a month on your smartphone. Wash your hair with aromatherapy shampoo, and apply an anti-aging cream infused with ginseng extract. A pricey smoothie made with 12 ingredients, including protein and collagen might be able to make your day slightly more special. Isn’t it familiar? Pretty sure, we are all into it.
In this exhibition Haena Yoo, whose art practice observes how distorted histories in everyday micro consumption lubricate capitalism through her father’s soy sauce factory and her mother’s personal cosmetic products, turns her attention to her sister’s interest in yoga and Pilates, focusing on self-care culture and industry. During the British colonization of India, yoga1 was banned and its ancient historical ethos of connecting the body and mind was dismantled. Similarly, Western colonization eroded indigenous life practices that were based on a collective culture sharing both domestic and productive labor and began to inject individualism infused with capitalism into society. Even Western figures with the sincerest intentions like Indra Devi2 and Richard Hittleman, who spent a long time in the region and struggled to learn the essence of yoga in order share its benefits with many, could not avoid the extreme commodification in their home countries where capitalism was born. Yoga’s functional effects on health and beauty along with a fetish for orientalism popularized it—especially among women—and led to the rapid expansion of secondary industries such as nutritional and beauty supplements. This has given rise to the exploitation of traditional knowledge, resources, and labor, such as the cultivation of herbs and medicinal plants, as well as excessive intervention into the environment. Today, palm oil, the source of glycerin, which is the base of most cosmetics, is produced by sweat labor. The popularity of tropical fruits as beauty foods generates mass carbon emissions from trade and many wild plant species such as maca, which once only grew in the Andean region of Peru, have been developed into cultivated varieties, disrupting ecological cycles. Like these GMO crops, today’s yoga has been crossbred with Pilates—which originated in the early 1920s from opposing Western perspectives—and other exercises to create a new realm of industry.
“Self Love.” Let’s take another look at the beautiful phrase. The extreme individualism that motivates colonization and the development of neoliberalism repeatedly and voluntarily subjugates our bodies and minds to capital, plunging us into isolation and self-doubt, severing relationships. Here we are not the subjects. The need for self love, framed as a restoration of the self, ultimately serves as a means to define the self that dreams of existing outside of capitalist society as an object of healing and to return to the cycle of labor. Self love, where “I” is the subject, is in fact gaslighting—suggesting the origin of the problem lies within oneself. The artist thus unfolds a landscape of distorted emotions and bodies that consume the altered history through the self love industry, which wins over our hearts. Cold and bizarre massage devices promise 0.1mg of sustainable youth, health, and inner peace. Gently massaging glycerin bodies soothe the urge to break the laptop that causes our tech neck and to rebel against our bosses. The flattened histories encapsulated within yoga mats and disassembled Pilates machines are refracted in transparent bodies, mixed with all kinds of undigested “healthy” ingredients. Believe it or not, swollen pine roots infected by fungi are said to be excellent for lowering cholesterol. So even if it costs as much as gold, it is an investment in oneself, isn’t it? Inhale to loosen your mind with love, exhale as your limbs tear in self-torture, to be reborn as this era’s beautiful woman, faithful consumer, and healthy worker.
Breathe in, breathe out.