Bottom: M.C. Abbott, María Buey González, and Carl Olsson: Peak Face (2021)
Images from the Virtual Beauty exhibition
'This exhibition
highlights how questions of beauty are intrinsically
linked to the screens and devices
through which we view ourselves every
day, and the altered, enhanced,
or filtered identities we share via
these devices.'
I.
Currently showing at Somerset House is a new exhibition curated by Gonzalo Herrero Delicado [a], Matthilde Friis [b], and Bunny Kinney [c].
Entitled Virtual Beauty and featuring work by over twenty artists working across sculpture, photography, installation, and video, it explores the impact of digital culture
and technologies on traditional notions of beauty; in other words whereof aesthetics in an age of social media, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence [d].
Well, I say that, but it seems to me that most of the works are really more concerned with sexuality and subjectivity, self-image and identity, rather than with beauty per se (which is fair enough, I suppose, as it's virtually impossible to discuss the latter without also discussing these other topics).
II.
According to the press statement, a highlight of the show is a work entitled Omniprésence (1993) by the French multi-media artist ORLAN who has been interrogating ideas of beauty and how the body is stylised since before many of the other participants in the exhibition were even born; and perhaps no one has taken things as far as her.
However, in an age when plastic surgery is now common and there are several reality TV programmes happy to portray in graphic detail what such cosmetic procedures involve (and how they can sometimes have very undesirable conequences), watching a 21 minute film of the above under the knife over thirty years ago is a bit boring after a couple of minutes.
It's an ironic consequence of living in a world which artists such as ORLAN anticipated by pushing the boundaries between art and technology and questioning not only what it is to be beautiful but human, that their work - groundbreaking and transgressive at the time - now seems naive and passé.
This, of course, is also an unfortunate consequence of getting old; one has seen and heard and read so much already about the urgent questions that this exhibition addresses.
However, as I don't want to be negative or sound like a grumpy old man who thinks he knows it all, perhaps it's best if I constrain my remarks to the works that did excite my interest and make smile; works to do with cyborgs, sex dolls, representations of the black female body, and the philosophical question of faciality (i.e., several of my longtime obsessions).
III.
Firstly, I'd like to discuss a narrated video made as part of a collaborative research project entitled Peak Face (2021), by M. C. Abbott, María Buey González and Carl Olssen, which pondered whether we're entering a post-facial era where sapience is no
longer tied to a thing that overcodes and organises not only the front of the human head, but the entire body - the entire planet! - if given the chance to do so [e].
As a Deleuzian, I've long been fascinated by that very special mechanism known as the face. And the politics of faciality [f] - or enfacialisation as I think the evolutionary biologists like to say - continues to intrigue.
For it's a fascinating question, is it not, to ask what happens (and what comes next) if you uncouple sapience (i.e., the form of social intelligence that is definitional of modern humanity) from faces; will a posthuman future know nothing of physiognomy, or will artificially intelligent entities develop faces of their very own?
In other words, could
it be that faces are indispensable and that even cyborgs will remain trapped in the facial age; "or is our
facialised world simply an accident of evolution" [3] [g], rather than the universal fate awaiting man, beast, and machine alike?
In as much as art should challenge us to rethink ideas and reimagine the possibilities of self, then Peak Face is, arguably, the standout work of the exhibition. For it powerfully reminds viewers that whilst "it is indubitable that the face has proven to be an incredibly
resilient platform in a variety of ecological contexts
and has been a constant throughout a wide arc of
speciation" [5], there is "no positive reason to believe that
having a face is optimally adaptive on Earth in an
absolute sense - and even if it was in the past, that
would be no guarantee that it is now" [5].
Of course, given the ubiquitous character of the face, it may seem losing it or "even imagining an end to faciality is an impossibe exercise" [12]. And yet, says Olsson, peak face may be just around the corner; i.e., there may be a point "beyond which both self-representation and cephalisation decline as social processes discover alternative platforms" [13].
That doesn't necessarily spell the end of the face, but it would mark a major upheaval: after peak face, everything changes. And the irony is that "such a turning point may occur
through the deployment of the very technologies
that have driven the proliferation of selfies and other
forms of facial representation" [13].
Olsson concludes:
"The defacement of the world may be a chance to
save ourselves from the constraints of the facial
platform. Soon we might be able to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, earnestly, 'Do we really need
this?'" [16]
IV.
And speaking of mirrors ...
Probably the most fun exhibit - certainly for narcissists like me - was Ines Alpha's magic mirror which gives everyone the opportunity to become-cyborg (see image below) and experience the possibilities afforded by new technologies in constructing posthuman identities that are not tied to the constraints of biological reality and societal expectation.
If Alpha's virtual 3D makeup isnt quite as liberating (or as empowering) as she likes to believe and doesn't enable us to lose the face, at least it allows us to mask and mutate the latter in superficial ways and, importantly, her dreamlike vision of beauty isn't corrective or all about an ideal of perfection; "it’s speculative and
full of opportunities for reinvention" [h].
It's a shame Virtual Beauty has been declared as not suitable for visitors under 15 years of age [i], as I think that this age group would not only have the most to learn, but probably have the most fun too - particularly with Alpha's mixed media installation.
Selfie taken on 14 August 2025 with my i-Phone in Ines Alpha's magic mirror
which formed part of her work entitled I'd rather be a cyborg (2024) [j]
Notes
[a] Gonzalo Herrero Delicado is a London-based independent curator, educator, editor, and architect concerned with the impact of climate change and digital technologies on the world and artistic practice.
[b] Matthilde Friis is a visual anthropologist and PhD candidate at Northumbria University. Her
research and work explore issues around sexuality, feminism and gender. She curated the exhibition Working Girls! at Gallery 46 (London, E1), in 2024, which had obvious appeal for illicit lovers (and lovers of the illicit) everywhere.
[c] Bunny Kinney is a British-Canadian filmmaker, creative director, and
consultant, who knows how to cast a critical theoretical eye on issues within contemporary culture such as youth identity, gender and sexality. He co-curated Charles Jeffrey: The Lore of Loverboy
exhibition at Somerset House in 2024, which I discussed in a post published on 9 August 2024: click here.
[d] For full details about the exhibition, which runs from 23 July until 28 September, at Somerset House, Strand, London WC2, visit the Somerset House website: click here. And to watch a short promotional film on YouTube featuring three of the artists discussed in this post (and from where I borrowed the title), click here.
[e] The project was developed at the Strelka
Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, as part of a three-year research and design initiative, The Terraforming
(2020-22), directed by Benjamin H. Bratton and Nicolay Boyadjiev.
Readers are encouraged to read Olsson's essay 'Peak Face' (2023) which
is available on the Urbanomic website and can be downloaded as a pdf: click here. And to watch the Peak Face video on YouTube: click here.
It sounds a bit dramatic to say the face organises the entire body, but as Olsson writes:
"From their humble origins as mere front-ends,
faces developed into composites [which ...] played an important role in organising and
constraining the physiology of many animals, and [...] they have played this role continuously for a very, very long time. Nothing, it seems,
escapes the face." [4]
Some readers, loyal to the face, might be quick to ask So what? and point to the many evolutionary advantages faces bring, but as Olsson also reminds us, "while faces have undoubtedly
enabled a new level of behavioural complexity and
flexibility, they may also have imposed limitations
on the acquisition of future traits" [4].
As for the face organising the entire planet ... Olsson argues, rightly, I think, that the built environment "has not just been shaped
to 'fit' the face but has been constructed in its image" [10] in an act of planetary-scale narcissism.
[f] See, for example, the post on Torpedo the Ark published on 13 September 2013 - click here - in which I discuss the politics of the face. And for a much more recent post on probe-heads [têtes chercheuses] in relation to the sculptural work of Daniel Silver (published 18 December 2024), click here.
[g] Carl Olsson, 'Peak Face' - essay linked to in note [e]. Note that all following page numbers given in the post - and in note [e] - refer to the pdf that can be downloaded from the Urbanomic website.
[h] Matthilde Friis, Virtual Beauty exhibition essay - 'From the Selfie to the Avatar: Beauty, Bias, and the Digital Self' - available on the Somerset House website: click here.
[i] To be honest, I'm not sure if declaring an exhibition as unsuitable for under 15s prohibits them from entering or if it is merely a required notification. What if, for example, they are accompanied by an adult? I do seem to recall that when I was at the exhibition a woman entered with a child in a pushchair, but perhaps they were deeemed too young to be upset or corrupted by the art on display.
Part two of this post (sections V - VIII) will be published shortly.
