From Snapchat dysmorphia to looksmaxing, have digital beauty standards made us lose sight of what's real, asks a new exhibition

There’s a saying circulating on the internet that we’re never meant to see our faces as much as we do now. Our ancestors from days of old saw their blurry reflections in water. Later came the invention of the mirror, then the camera, and now there’s social media, exposing us to countless faces every day. Some are edited and distorted, pushed by algorithms telling us what’s trending and should be considered beautiful. You might have come across terms like looksmaxing or Instagram face – a specific aesthetic with full lips, cat-like eyes, high cheekbones, long lashes, and a small nose. Often racially ambiguous, borrowing beauty aspects from various ethnicities, it has a cyborgian essence, a homogenised look that can be achieved through makeup, aesthetic procedures, or good photo editing tools.

It is a distorted view which can be traced back to endless exposure to selfies, leading to a kind of Snapchat dysmorphia – a social media phenomenon fuelled by unrealistic beauty standards. We're hyper-aware in how we present ourselves.

These complex changes to beauty in the digital world are explored in Virtual Beauty, a new exhibition at Somerset House featuring the work of over 20 international artists working across photography, video, installations, and sculpture. They explore our new online reality, questioning who holds the power in defining beauty when social media filters, AI, dating apps, and biometrics are reshaping our understanding of identity, race, gender, and sexuality. The works delve into dystopian themes, nostalgia, and the surreal, shifting between past, present, and future.

'Virtual Beauty is trying to bring more questions than giving answers. We talk a lot about self-representation, thinking about the key factors that define beauty today. Not only how different technologies play a role, but also how social media and popular culture influence us on both psychological and physical levels,' says Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, who co-curated the exhibition with Mathilde Friis and Bunny Kinney.

Part of Somerset House’s 25th birthday program, the show addresses urgent issues from a unique perspective. 'If we started curating Virtual Beauty today, the results a year from now would look different because everything is constantly changing, especially with technology and how many artists are using new tools to express themselves and create work,' Kinney says.

The new generation coming of age has grown up in a world where curating virtual identities is a constant part of daily life. 'We’re noticing that young people on Instagram and TikTok are using these digital tools in new ways and redefining what beauty looks like. It doesn’t resemble the traditional idea of beauty. It’s a more radical, weird, and fantastical version, breaking away from the industry-driven standards set by a bunch of white men in suits sitting in the boardroom deciding trends,' Kinney adds.

The exhibition is divided into three sections. The first covers the last 20 years and traces the early stages of digital self-representation – on display in a glass case is a relic of modern times: a silver Samsung flip phone from 2003. It’s one of the first mobile phones with a built-in camera, paving the way for front-facing selfies. The selfie’s power is now undeniable, as Kim Kardashian can attest, having capitalised on her selfies in her 2015 book Selfish. Like other members of her family, the Kardashians have influenced contemporary beauty standards and aesthetic trends despite their scandals.

In the same room are works by ORLAN titled Omniprésence (1992). Four photographs and a video of an operatic nature document her seventh medial performance, broadcast publicly in galleries and museums, asking viewers for feedback. The plastic surgery was intended to challenge Western beauty ideals and raise questions about social taboos and unreachable aesthetic standards. It reveals a grim reality of cosmetic procedures, foreshadowing how plastic surgeons now post before-and-after images or videos of surgeries to millions on social media, even creating memes like Dr. Miami.

Qualeasha Wood’s large and striking embroidered tapestry, It’s All For U (If U Rlly Want It) (2024), blends traditional textile techniques with digital aesthetics. It questions how the identity of the Black femme body is portrayed in digital spaces, often misrepresented or erased. Challenging the commodification of the body, she includes a webcam selfie of herself to highlight the tumultuous relationship between self-expression and social media's extensive influence.

Elsewhere, AI is considered, as a tool to enhance, alter and refashion the body. Works in the collection explore how such technologies have gone mainstream, including what can be considered harmless in AI photo editing apps. One work that’s impossible to miss is Arvida Byström’s installation A Daughter Without a Mother (2022), featuring a female sex doll lying on the floor. The artist equipped the discarded doll with AI speech-generation software, modifying it to operate outside domestic and sexual contexts. While analysing how AI can reinforce the sexualisation and objectification of the female body, Byström encourages viewers to reflect on the complexities of identity and intimacy linked to human-shaped mechanisms.

The three-channel film Past Life (2021), created by Ben Cullen Williams in collaboration with visionary makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench, was made as a result of a public open call. Participants posed in certain ways and applied makeup from specific instructions, after which their images entered a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). The AI generated a series of films featuring distorted, altered faces, pushing beyond traditional beauty standards into a new, unsettling aesthetic of the human form.

What might beauty and desire might look like in a technologised future? With the rise of portable devices, gaming, streaming environments, and social media platforms, one space in the exhibition acts as a microcosm of a future digital world. More people are developing alternate personas through 3D-scanned digital bodies and modeled avatars in virtual spaces, and these advancements are transforming perceptions of beauty and identity. 'The exhibition completes a circuit between the virtual and the real world. It's an exploration about how digital culture and technology affect us in everyday life,' says Dr. Cliff Lauson, Director of Exhibitions at Somerset House.

Both profound and thought-provoking, Virtual Beauty leaves one wondering if in the the relentless pursuit of beauty, we are more vulnerable online than ever before.

Virtual Beauty is at Somerset House until 28 September