‘no wrong answers (are you beautiful)’ forces the viewer to make a choice; are you beautiful or are you not? The viewer is instructed by gum wrappers to peel a piece of chewing gum from the underside of a chair and plop it in one of the tubes.
the gum all falls to the same side. in reality, the viewer had no agency at all; the decision was not theirs to make.
the piece aims to confront ideas around the illusion of choice, for women in particular. Although told that it is possible to do what you want, to wear what you want, to feel how you want, the entrenched societal structures instead provide a right or wrong anyway.
a woman chewing gum was seen as unladylike and distasteful throughout the 1900s, and therefore used as a small act of rebellion.
garish and girly magazine-influenced imagery is scattered around the piece to further emphasise the disillusion of what women are told what they can do, versus the pre-planned societal expectations had of us.
