It's a commanding image: an enormous close-up photograph of a tongue sticking out from bright-red-lacquered lips, underneath facial-hair stubble.
"It goes against the stereotypes of men and their masculinity," Anthony Moses III said of Matthias Herrmann's "Untitled (Lips)," a 43-by-53 inch chromogenic color print at the entrance to a gallery at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.
"You see that first when you go into the exhibit and ... you're like what does this exhibit mean? What's it going towards?" Moses added.
The exhibit is "Flaw(less)," and Moses, a student at Lincoln College Prepatory Academy, is one of the exhibit's 11 high-school-age curators.
Moses is part of the Kemper Museum's Teen Art Council, a group of teenagers from around the Kansas City metro who put together this show.
The students had their hands in the entire process: They came up with the theme, selected images from the museum's permanent collection, wrote the accompanying information, worked on the marketing materials and helped with installation.
When it came to choosing what pieces of art to put on display, the students focused on society's limited understanding of who and what is beautiful. They drew inspiration from challenging the idea of flaws.
"Now in this day and age there is a standard of beauty, there's a standard for what perfection is," said Katie Moore, another member of teen council. "A lot of people feel like they don't meet that standard."
It wasn't always a tension-free experience for Kemper staff to accept that teen-specific perspective. Moses said he had to fight to get "Untitled (Lips)" into the show. He said the adult curator who oversees the program didn't want to include the piece and had it eliminated at a meeting Moses missed.
At the next one, Moses, and others, pressed their case for the image to be included.
Copyright 2018 KCUR 89.3
