Coloured Lips (2003) – Mouth as Threshold

With Coloured Lips, Beatriz Millar focuses on the interval between inner experience and external expression. Large female mouths—rendered in red, blue, green, and pink—function as pop-inflected visual icons positioned between emotion and language.

Each mouth operates as a threshold: a site where thought, hesitation, irony, and disclosure converge. Surrounding each image are four short English rhymes, composed in a playful and ironic tone reminiscent of tongue twisters. These verses address everyday contradictions, joys, and tensions through concise and rhythmic phrasing.

The series establishes a structured dialogue between color and text. The mouth becomes a focal device through which interiority is externalized. Rather than serving as portrait, it operates as a symbolic aperture in which speech, reflection, and humor intersect.