LONDON.- Today, Somerset House announces the full list of contributing artists and the complete public programme for Virtual Beauty, including panel talks, exclusive curator tours, and special events.


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As part of Somerset House’s 25th birthday programme, Virtual Beauty explores how digital culture is reshaping our understanding of beauty and identity - offering fresh perspective on an urgent subject.


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Curated by Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, Mathilde Friis, and Bunny Kinney, and featuring over 20 international artists working across sculpture, photography, installation, and video, Virtual Beauty delves into the influence of artificial intelligence, social media, and digital avatars on self-image, and questions who holds the power to define beauty.

Joining previously announced artists such as ORLAN, Amalia Ulman, Hyungkoo Lee, Minne Atairu, Qualeasha Wood, Ben Cullen Williams and Isamaya Ffrench, Aleksander Nærbø, Ines Alpha, Bunny Kinney, Angelfire, Harriet Davey, Anan Fries, Andrew Thomas Huang and James Merry, and Frederik Heyman are:

• Sin Wai Kin, Somerset House Studios resident artist and Turner Prize nominee, who explores the power of storytelling, drag, and fantasy to reshape perceptions of identity in The Storyteller (2023).

• Lil Miquela, viral virtual influencer and Time magazine’s “25 Most Influential People on the Internet,” who radically blurs the lines between real and artificial as she models for fashion brands and advocates for causes online.

• Arvida Byström critically examines how AI is used to replicate beauty standards and perpetuates the sexualisation of the female body in her mixed media installation A Daughter Without A Mother (2022).

• M.C. Abbott, María Buey González & Carl Olsson, whose work Peak Face (2021) uses Augmented Reality to question if we’re entering a “post-facial” era where identity is no longer rooted in the human face.

• Filip Ćustić, a Spanish-Croatian multidisciplinary artist, who brings the hyperrealist sculpture pi(x)el (2022) – a body made of silicone and LED screens, inviting viewers to reconfigure its parts and explore fluidity across gender, race, and age.

• Michael Wallinger, an Austrian media artist, whose Iterative Body Synthesis (2022) investigates digital platforms and self-perception through a monitoring interface for “sisi.spec” – a virtual identity developed on Instagram.

In addition to these artists, a full public programme of events have been announced, which will include exclusive tours of the exhibition with curators Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, Mathilde Friis, and Bunny Kinney, plus a Relaxed Session – for anyone who would like to explore Virtual Beauty in a calm and comfortable environment.

In an age where digital self-curation is second nature, Virtual Beauty invites audiences to reflect on identity, empowerment, and the shifting boundaries of beauty in the post-internet era.

From social media filters and artificial intelligence to biometrics and dating apps, the works by emerging and established artists examine how we are more self-aware and calculated in the way we present ourselves publicly than ever before - and how these altered, enhanced, and filtered identities can both constrain and empower.

Co-Curators Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, Mathilde Friis, Bunny Kinney said: “Virtual Beauty examines what ‘beauty’ means in the 21st century, and how technology and digital culture are shaping and changing this definition. We live in a world where digital self-curation is part of everyday life, and digitally native generations are coming of age.

“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.

“Virtual Beauty reconsiders who holds the power to define conventions of beauty today and the very definition of human identity. “


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