New exhibition in London considers beauty in the post-Internet era

Presented as part of Somerset House's 25th birthday celebrations, Virtual Beauty asks questions about beauty and self-representation in our hyperconnected, image-saturated age. Originally a group exhibition at last year’s Art Basel – and showing in a new form this summer in London – it first took shape in the hands of co-curator Bunny Kinney and make-up artist Isamaya Ffrench during the launch of Dazed Beauty in 2019. “Isamaya had a vision of what beauty could look like the future,” explains Kinney, “and we had these kids on TikTok coming of age and deciding what beauty looked like [too].. it was way more radical and real and we wanted to look at how we could harness this.”

The exhibition – which runs with a pay-what-you-can entry ticket – touches on biometrics, neural chips, avatars, perceptions of pregnancy, how AI can also distort identity and even considers our perceptions of beauty after death with a piece on embalming rituals. Vienna video artist Michael Wallinger’s "Iterative Body Synthesis" is a full room exhibit that examines how Instagram handles different bodies and whether their systems for content recognition and recommendation are biased for certain types of body images – rewarding them with more reach and attention.

A full public programme of events has also been announced, including exhibition tours with Kinney and co-curators Gonzalo Herrero Delicado and Mathilde Friis plus a “relaxed session” for anyone who would like to explore Virtual Beauty in a calm and comfortable environment.

In recent years, Somerset House has built a reputation for staging events that tap directly into the radical, experimental and zeitgeisty - with a particular interest to music fans. Last year, Charles Jeffrey LOVERBOY showed costumes worn by the likes of Harry Styles and Charli xcx while CUTE in 2023 had an entire room curated by Hannah Diamond and inspired by a girl's sleepover – with videos from SOPHIE, A.G. Cook, GFOTY, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, felicita and more.