HEK Haus der Elektronischen Künste

Today, technology allows us to be more self-aware and calculated in the way we present ourselves publicly than ever before. A new generation now comes of age who have never lived in a world where the idea of digital self-staging has not been a facet of their everyday lives. Questions of beauty are inherent to the proliferation of portable devices and screens on which people look at themselves and share these curated identities with the world. From social media filters and dating apps to artificial intelligence to biometrics, the exhibition Virtual Beauty examines the impact of the latest digital technologies on the definition of beauty and how they radically transform our notions of gender, sexuality, race, and identity. Wandering between the virtual and physical, the artists presented in this exhibition question what beauty is today, inviting us to reconsider the very definition of human identity in the post-internet era.

Featured artists: Ines Alpha, Angelfire, Arvida Byström, GERIKO in collaboration with Juno Calypso, Filip Ćustić, Harriet Davey, Anan Fries & Malu Peeters, Maria Guta, Frederik Heyman, Andrew Thomas Huang & James Merry, Hyphen-Labs, Keiken, Bunny Kinney, Lil Miquela, Aleksander Nærbø, ORLAN, Daniel Sannwald & Beauty_GAN, Simon Senn, Michael Wallinger, Ben Cullen Williams & Isamaya Ffrench.

Curators: Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, Bunny Kinney, Mathilde Friis and Marlene Wenger