The Cult of Beauty

Ideal beauty is ideal because it does not exist.

Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, 1990

Driven by an innate desire, we tend to believe the myth of an eternal hierarchy of beauty, despite its evolving nature. Notions of physical attractiveness shift, but our pursuit of them remains constant. 

How have these unattainable perceptions and beliefs developed? Here, instead of charting a chronology of beauty, we bring together historical objects and contemporary art to put morality, status, health, age, gender and race in dialogue. We investigate how beauty ideals are constructed through society, politics, religion and medicine across time and cultures. 

We visit the long history of self-imaging in an age of ‘selfies’, while reflecting on how the media portrays contemporary beauty standards. Is our understanding of beauty today truly becoming more inclusive?

Bello e buono!

“Beautiful and virtuous!” is an Italian saying reflecting the belief that external beauty is associated with inner qualities. Connecting beauty with moral virtue has sometimes been used to justify the belief in physiognomy – that a person’s facial features reveal their character. 

Beautiful features have long been seen as a gateway to the spiritual in different belief systems. Transcending earthly order they offer glimpses of the divine. The pursuit of youthfulness and longevity has also been linked to godliness. This has had a long-lasting influence on a youth-focused culture around beauty.

Physiognomy – interpreting a person’s character through their facial features – has been practised in different cultures across time. When this German compendium was published, physiognomy was widely accepted in Europe, even taught at university. Chinese physiognomic face-reading similarly linked beauty with good character and fortune (not to be mistaken with medical face-reading that correlates features with symptoms). 

Our brains are optimised to read faces. Evolutionists believe that being able to extract information through facial cues is key to survival. But the process can produce huge biases and inaccuracies – beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. 

Vanitas, Latin for vanity, refers to a genre of artworks that conveys the inevitability of death and the emptiness of worldly pursuits, notably beauty. This 16th-century etching makes an overt moral judgement on the quest for beauty and wealth. The image reflects conflicting beliefs in Europe at the time, where beauty was seen as the outward expression of a virtuous character but cultivating personal beauty was condemned as hollow vanity.

Historian Jennifer M. Rampling on the Ripley Scroll

Named after the British alchemist George Ripley (d. 1490), this is a 17th-century reproduction of a 15th-century scroll. It presents alchemy in a positive light, as an ancient, secret science worthy of the king’s support. Using allegorical verse and imagery, it shows alchemy improving upon nature by transforming crude prime matter (shown as a toad) into a subtle elixir (the dragon’s blood). This substance can turn base metals into valuable silver and gold and prolong human life. 

The scroll’s design translates obscure laboratory practices into an exquisite advertisement for alchemy’s transformative power. 

Jennifer Rampling, Associate Professor of History, Princeton University

Splendor Solis

The Splendor of the Sun is one of the glories of 16th-century alchemical illumination. Beauty and rejuvenation are themes of an accompanying parable, which tells of an aged philosopher whose dismembered body is renewed through boiling. This is an allegory for alchemy’s use of heat to transform and perfect crude matter. In this late copy, the bearded philosopher waits in his cauldron while a “souffleur” pumps the bellows of the furnace below. Nearby, a frieze of the sculptor Pygmalion draws a mythological parallel with the alchemist’s quest to perfect metals and the human body. 

Jennifer Rampling, Associate Professor of History, Princeton University

One goal of alchemy was to create Aurum Potabile or ‘drinkable gold’. This substance was supposed to help the drinker attain beauty and prolong their youth. The 16th-century French courtier Diane de Poitiers purportedly consumed vast quantities of Aurum Potabile over the course of her life to preserve her renowned beauty. Forensic examination of her hair suggests this was ultimately to the detriment of her health. As a precious metal, gold continues to be associated with everlasting beauty. It is an ingredient used in many present-day beauty products for its supposed anti-ageing properties.

…they were not two, but a two-fold form…could not be called male or female, and seemed neither or either.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8 CE 

Classical sculptures are typically presented as the epitome of human forms. This ideal ties beauty to narrow standards based on strict rules of proportion and gender. 

But ‘classical perfection’ does not have its roots in antiquity itself. Philosophers and artists of the modern era became fascinated by classical statues, particularly from the 500s BCE. Their work cemented the popular image of the singular perfect male and female body. In fact, sculptors constantly experimented with styles, forms and techniques throughout the classical period, much like trends we see today. 

Contemporary works by artists Carlos Motta and Cassils challenge the preconceptions of who is deemed beautiful based on centuries of categorising our bodies into rigid binaries.

Professor Caroline Vout on the Esquiline Venus and Sleeping Hermaphroditus

The sculpture this sleeping figure reproduces on a reduced scale has been coveted and copied since the Renaissance. 17th-century artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini increased its sensuality by adding the marble mattress. It is one of many ancient representations of Hermaphroditus, a god of male and female sex, whose creation story is most famously told by Latin poet Ovid. That such a lovely, languorous figure should have a penis has often unsettled modern viewers. Collector Henry Blundell (1724–1810) violently censored his Hermaphroditus. He writes: ‘By means of a little castration… it became a sleeping Venus’. This version too appears to have been deliberately made gender binary.

Caroline Vout, Professor of Classics, University of Cambridge 

Artists Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) and William Hogarth (1697–1764) both turned to classical statues to glean some underlying principles of bodily beauty. 

For Dürer, human perfection was rooted in geometry. His prolific studies of human proportion, categorised by the binary of male and female, influenced the way Western artists and anatomists would think about bodily ideals for centuries to come. 

In The Analysis of Beauty, made two hundred years later, a figure holds up a Dürer study. Hogarth presents six defining principles of beauty – fitness, variety, regularity, simplicity, intricacy and quantity – which he extends to include ideas of personal character and social responsibility. 

With a rising interest in hygiene and exercise in modern Europe, male and female bodies were often classified into aspiring ‘types’ based on statues of Greco-Roman heroes and deities. These were deemed to be achievable through bodybuilding. The classical statue of the Farnese Hercules was both described as ‘the beauty’ and made a ludicrous symbol of obsessive exercise. 

In his 1910 treatise on physical exercise, Ferdinand Hueppe, advocate of white supremacist ideas of ‘racial hygiene’, holds up the wrestler and bodybuilder George Hackenschmidt (1878–1968), shown on the right, as an example of the ‘Herculean type’ for masculine beauty. 

Many beauty tools were first developed as medical devices. As science advanced and older instruments lost their original functions, many were repurposed to adorn and modify facial and bodily features. 

Access to medicine and healthcare in modern Europe was inextricably linked to class and social status. Beauty trends were also influenced by who had access to them. Corsetry, male grooming practices and beauty patches are all examples of this. They show how changeable our taste in beauty can be. They also reveal how our perceptions are tied to social circumstances and the notion of good health.

In Europe in the late 1500s, surgeons prescribed perforated iron breastplates for orthopaedic corrections. Under the influence of French queen Catherine de Medici (1519–1589), whalebone corsets became fashionable among the upper classes. Research in the late 18th century argued that overly tight corsets could be harmful, but they continued to be fashion staples, often accentuating a tightly cinched waist. 

Supportive bodices or ‘stays’ with purported health and comfort benefits also gained popularity in the late Victorian period. Electropathic belts were marketed as running a stimulating current through the wearer. Similar questionable claims promoted maternity corsets and stiffened bodices for infants.

Male grooming trends in Europe were shaped by hygiene standards and social constructs of masculinity. During King Louis XIV’s reign (1638–1715), powdered wigs signified wealth and status, while also concealing lice and hair loss caused by diseases like syphilis. Beards were out of style for two centuries until British soldiers returning from the Crimean War (1853–56) made them symbolic of heroic masculinity. Products created for men to sculpt and manage facial hair swiftly followed.

As with all trends, these beard styles were not uniformly adopted by all men. Social status, age and lifestyle influenced variations in individual choices of styles.

Beauty patches – or mouches (French for ‘flies’) – were commonly worn by men and women in Europe by the 1640s. Originally, they strategically covered smallpox or syphilis scars. Sex workers wore them to attract clientele. By the late 17th and into the 18th century, they had become elite fashion accessories, worn to enhance the radiance and whiteness of skin. There were social codes: where you wore your mouche could suggest anything from flirtation to political allegiance. The fashion for beauty patches waned with the invention of the smallpox vaccine in 1796, returning in the early 20th century as a popular fancy-dress accessory.

Conceived with author, academic and broadcaster Emma Dabiri, this display looks at the relationship between race and beauty. It probes the assumption that all preferences for light skin have their roots in Western colonisation. At the same time it acknowledges and explores how categorisations of racialised beauty have been a tool of colonial violence. Rejecting a singular understanding of race through skin colour, it looks at how whiteness is also manifested in the pursuit of beauty in relation to facial features.

This display also celebrates pioneers Josephine Baker and Rihanna who, a century apart, achieved more diverse and meaningful representation in the beauty industry.

Please be advised that this group display contains racist and misogynist materials.

Ancient Greek statues such as this are often assumed to represent idealised white, ‘natural’ beauty. This is a projection of modern biases. Scientific advances reveal its original appearance: a woman with an olive or light brown complexion and heavily made up, her hair possibly Afro-textured. 

The idea that light skin is more beautiful than dark skin is the consequence of colonisation and racist Western beauty norms in many contexts. But the example of pearl powder skin lightening from a Chinese medicinal book complicates this history. Published in 1591, it predates the introduction of Western notions of race. The French game is an early form of colonial propaganda. But the people listed as the lowest rung of humanity are not necessarily the darkest people, rather they are those whose land the French were in the process of appropriating. Coincidentally, the French just happen to be at the apex.  

Emma Dabiri, author, academic and broadcaster

Colonialism has often used the idea of beauty to disguise racial fetishisation, scientific racism and ethnographic profiling. Saartjie Baartman (c. 1789–1815), a Khoikhoi woman from eastern South Africa, was illegally exhibited in the UK and France. Her exploiters sexualised and racialised her as the ‘Hottentot Venus’ while French journals of medical sciences ridiculed her sexual organs.

Toutes les femmes, a volume of illustrations of sensualised naked women, uses methods of classification to legitimise the exoticising gaze. Its ‘genealogical’ tables categorise the women into ‘black’, ‘yellow’ and ‘white’ branches. Even when praised for their beauty women were subject to racist treatment. In The Book of Fair Women, German photographer E.O. Hoppé presents named women with ‘fair skin’ in fashionable adornment; those of Asian heritage in ‘ethnic garments’; women with darker skin appear unnamed and topless.

With its 40 foundation shades, Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty set a new standard for inclusivity when it launched in 2017. Reaching millions of women previously uncatered to when it came to shade matching, it was also incredibly business savvy. Fenty Beauty is currently estimated to be worth US$2.8 billion.

Josephine Baker was another Black female performer who transformed the beauty industry, a century earlier. In the 1930s she launched a range including the skin darkening ‘Bakerskin’. Wealthy white Parisian women were desperate to achieve her iconic ‘Baker look’. Baker’s popularity contributed to a ‘trend for blackness’, instrumental in the tanning craze that started in France and would go on to transform Western beauty ideals.

Emma Dabiri, author, academic and broadcaster

Until recently, Black women – particularly those with more African features, Afro-textured hair and darker complexions – were almost invisible in mainstream popular culture. Those who did appear were generally women seen as conforming more closely to Eurocentric beauty standards. But a long overdue increase in darker skinned women can now be seen on our screens and magazines. Their presence, as well as the broad range of characters they play, suggests things are finally starting to change.

Similarly, on the rare occasions East Asian men were represented in popular culture, they were stereotyped by racist tropes as effeminate. But factors including K-pop and the revolution in Asian American TV and film have led to a huge increase in visibility and breadth of roles.

Emma Dabiri, author, academic and broadcaster

Fashion and beauty magazines document how beauty standards change over time. In recent years, the media has made visible efforts to become more inclusive, working towards broader representation. But which of these efforts are truly inclusive? Which perpetuate a system of othering?

For over 60 years, Barbie has been one of many children’s earliest encounters with modern beauty standards. Her unrealistic proportions do not reflect the reality or diversity of human bodies. Scaled up to adult-size here, the Barbie and Oriol mannequins illustrate the impossible ideals we are sold. In contrast, Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm’s An Algorithimic Gaze II illuminates the beauty in the transient nature of our bodies.

Curator Janice Li on An Algorithmic Gaze II by Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm and the ARTificial Mind studio

We are born with differently shaped and sized bodies. Across our lifetime, our bodies also change due to the natural process of ageing as well as unexpected accidents, illnesses and other body-altering events. Based on datasets assembled globally, this endlessly morphing human figure generated by AI through a 10-month-long learning process never repeats.

“AI doesn’t have the worldview and constructs we do. We are responsible for the biases it produces”, Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm reflects. Through the gaze of AI, she invites us to meditate on the transient beauty of the human form.

Fashion and beauty magazines not only capture ephemeral trends but also historical turning points through their representations of beauty. They chart early 20th-century images that follow western beauty ideals, through to the era-defining decade of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ in Britain, to the first Black women appearing on Vogue covers.

In recent years, magazine editors have made visible efforts to introduce wider representation of ages, body types, ethnic backgrounds and sexualities. As consumers, we have to assess which of these efforts genuinely celebrate a broader spectrum of beauty, which are tokenistic, and which perpetuate othering practices.

Hair holds immense power to tell stories and form communities. It carries significant meaning as a symbol of heritage, traditions and identity in many cultures around the world. Different hairstyles, textures and adornments can speak to a shared sense of belonging, pride or solidarity as much as a liberating expression of individuality.

Jamaican-born British hairstylist and creative Cyndia Harvey explores how hairstyles can be a binding force for young people of the African diaspora growing up away from the land of their heritage. Chinese American artist Jennifer Ling Datchuk uses hair as a restorative medium, reconciling difficult histories within Asian American and Pacific Islanders communities in the US.

Jennifer Ling Datchuk’s multimedia practice explores beauty at the intersection of her own layered identity as a Chinese American woman, a ‘third culture kid’. To Datchuk, hair is a rare domain where East Asian community care is on public display. This Rapunzel-like hair ladder is braided in dark brown hair instead of blonde, held together by porcelain beads that carry words of affirmation from the community. Created in the heat of the Stop Asian American and Pacific Islander Hate movement in America, it reclaims the ladder imagery used in racist propaganda during the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

Humans have an instinctual desire to see ourselves. But for millennia that meant only seeing silhouettes or dim and distorted reflections. It was not until the 14th century with the invention of glass-blowing that undistorted mirrors became available, and then only to the wealthy.

Today we see ourselves more than ever before. The way we understand and manipulate our self-image has changed drastically in the last two decades with the invention of the selfie camera on mobile devices.

Tracing the history of our mirror image, from ancient Egypt to the cosmetic compact mirror to selfie culture and its impact on mental health, we ask: can our relationship with self-perception be an empowering one?

The earliest known mirrors – dating to 4000 BCE in Iran – were made from copper. By 800–100 BCE, bronze was used, but as the ancient Egyptian mirror here shows, this still barely reflected a discernable sillhoutte. Hand-held glass convex mirrors were in use in Southwest Asia from 600 CE, giving intimate yet faint reflections.

By the early 1900s, the mirror compact was an affordable beauty symbol for the modern woman. The front-facing camera phone was a radical development in the long cultural history of mirror-making. This technology has opened up new ways to look at and think about our own faces and bodies.

This medieval miniature shows ancient Roman artist Marcia. Boccaccio describes her making a self-portrait using a mirror in his De Mulierbus Claris (Concerning Famous Women), the first book in Western literature devoted to the achievements of women. The convex mirror in the illustration would not have been available during Marcia’s lifetime.

Most self-portraits now take a very different form. Celebrity Kim Kardashian’s autobiography consists solely of mobile phone ‘selfies’. The generation coming of age with easy access to selfies has been labelled as obsessed with their own image. How does the way we self-image affect how we perceive ourselves?

The mass-marketing of beauty products permeated the 20th century, with adverts for lipsticks on billboards and mascara brushes on screen.

The use of innovative materials and technology in beauty aids has a much longer history. From ancient Egyptian powder compacts to Renaissance cosmetics to thermographic eyeshadow, this section investigates the business of beauty. It explores how commercialisation and design have transformed pharmaceuticals and surgical procedures into the full-blown beauty industry as we know it today.

The promotion of mainstream standards has cemented beauty as both cultural currency and commercial goldmine. This has had a huge influence on our relationship to our bodies and how we view one another. Increased availability of cosmetic applications and operations can be empowering and lifechanging. But it can also reinforce ableist ideas and sometimes cause physical and mental harm. With greater access to products and procedures both online and offline, how do we exercise our agency while prioritising our safety and wellbeing?

Many off-the-shelf modern cosmetic products can be traced back to lab-made pharmaceuticals. The turn of the 20th century saw an explosion of pharmacy products packaged and sold as skincare and make-up. This was prompted by factors including industrialisation, the rising popularity of affordable cosmetics and women’s increasing purchasing power.

Burroughs Wellcome & Co.’s Hazeline Snow Cream benefitted from Wellcome’s global distributing channels to become available worldwide. With its decorative packaging, the cream was marketed with print advertisements selling the image of young women looking into the mirror, promoting ‘The Cult of Beauty’. Its enduring legacy influenced many similar pharmacies-turned-beauty-brands, including the Japanese conglomerate Shiseido.

In the late 1890s, pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome & Co. began producing a range of products including soaps, dentifrice and suppositories under the brand name Hazeline. Containing distilled witch hazel extract, they were marketed as having medicinal properties. Skin creams such as Hazeline Snow were the most popular.

By the 1920s, Hazeline Snow was being promoted as a beauty product. It was distributed globally with distinct localised marketing strategies for various parts of Europe, the Americas and East Asia. It marked a turning point when many pharmacies began to sell skincare and make-up products with highly decorative branding, a phenomenon observed internationally.

Donning a lab coat and situating herself in male-centred laboratories, the Polish American entrepreneur Helena Rubinstein pioneered the use of pseudo-science in beauty product marketing, profitting hugely from it.

“When I first met her, [she] looked like a Russian tsarina, with ruby rings the size of bird’s eggs on her fluttering fingers,” Estée Lauder recalled. The contrast between this description and these photographs demonstrates Rubinstein’s canny manipulation of her public image. She became the first self-made female cosmetics millionaire.

The rich material culture of cosmetics is testament to the longstanding human endeavour in pursuit of beauty. Our desire to enhance and adorn our appearance has motivated innovation and creativity. Wide-ranging examples from ancient Egyptian make-up tools to LED face masks illustrate how much and, how little has changed.

The ways in which cosmetics are designed and applied often reflect collective social values. From make-up products and devices designed for blind and low-vision users, to algae-extracted ingredients and compostable packaging, this open, tactile display showcases the influence of accessibility and sustainability in the rapidly evolving cosmetics sector today.

The first cosmetic palettes, mostly used to grind and hold coloured eye pigments, appear as early as Neolithic times. Initially regular geometric shapes, they were later made in the forms of animals or figures. They are surprisingly similar to modern-day eyeshadow palettes.

From head-shaped powder compacts to face irons and fat rolllers, beauty tools made centuries or even millennia apart have echoing forms and functions. They demonstrate the intuitive approaches humans have always had to make-up and skincare procedures.

Many devices adopted by aestheticians have their origins in medicine. Electrotherapy targeting wrinkles and pimple prevention was first used to treat tuberculosis. Oxygen therapy to promote younger-looking skin was originally an asthma treatment. Devices were redesigned and rescaled, first to fit into salons, then into domestic spaces. Face masks with LED lights that have become popular in recent years have their roots in technology promoting wound healing by stimulating cell growth, first used on NASA astronauts in the 1990s.

These beauty tools and vessels demonstrate the significance people of different cultures have historically placed on cosmetics. They feature precious materials such as rubies, crystals, and Longquan celadon – a green-glazed Chinese ceramic – as well as the exquisite craft of marquetry and delicate metal-welding.

This was translated into the luxury beauty market of the 20th century. Limited edition products signed by artists or designed to reveal affluence were sought after as markers of social status.

With increasing awareness and advocacy from disabled users, accessibility has become an active consideration in the development of beauty products. For example, Kohl Kreatives’ Flex Collection brush handles are designed to be easy-to-grip and bendable for people with limited dexterity. Feast Your Eyes Brushes gives blind and low-vision users information through braille and assistive technology, including audio descriptions.

Even products not designed with accessibility in mind can facilitate user experience. In the audio guide, blind artist Kimberly Burrows explains how tactile bumps and textured finishes allow her to distinguish products quickly by touch.

120 billion units of packaging are discarded every year by the global cosmetics industry, making it the second largest source of plastic waste from packaging after the food industry.

Beauty packaging tends to have more complex mechanisms, making it challenging to recycle. In response, London-based Shellworks has brought together biology, engineering and design to create Vivomer. Derived from microbes, it is fully compostable, vegan and petroleum-free.

Packaging made of Vivomer has been taken up by like-minded brands like Sana Jardin and Hæckels, companies dedicated to the principles of circular economy and marine conservation respectively.

Beauty Sensorium features five ‘Renaissance Goos’ – reconstructed cosmetic recipes from a 1562 Italian text, The Ornaments of Women. This type of products was often made by Jewish women immigrants following the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.

Renaissance apothecaries organised vessels and recipe manuals in a similar way to contemporary soft matter scientists, according to their fluid properties. The women who made cosmetics at home had a sophisticated understanding of how to exploit the tactile properties of natural materials. This project highlights the historically overlooked role women played as pioneering chemists and botanists.

Inviting you to look, smell and touch, this installation brings together historical references with multisensory encounters, suggesting that much of our scientific knowledge is acquired through first-hand, sensory experiences.

Both images show the busy interiors of apothecary shops, jars of medical ingredients neatly arranged on shelves. In the painting, the female assistant has paused from making up a prescription to peer at a monkey holding up an upturned urine flask. As well as working as assistants, women in the early modern period sometimes ran apothecaries’ shops themselves. In the etching, a pharmacist pours medicine into a vessel held by a little girl. Many women made a living by selling medicines and cosmetics. Poorer women might sell homemade products to friends and neighbours or peddle them in markets.

Jill Burke, Professor of Renaissance Visual and Material Cultures, University of Edinburgh

The concept of beauty is packaged, experienced and instrumentalised both as cultural currency and source of monetary value in modern societies. The myth of perfect beauty is a social fiction perpetuated by popular media; it reinforces capitalist, consumerist, misogynistic socioeconomic systems and power structures.

Artists Juno Calypso and Makeupbrutalism challenge deep-seated prejudices, unhealthy beliefs and invisible social pressure with incisive humour, staging themselves in striking photographic works.

The beauty pageant, a 20th-century phenomenon, speaks volumes about beauty standards and gendered roles and expectations. This display looks at contests ranging from West London’s Black beauty pageants in the 1960s to those held in Brazilian prisons today to ask: who do we really do it for?

As Makeupbrutalism, former make-up artist Eszter Magyar began sharing provocative content mixing “social criticism with human aesthetics” on social media in 2018. This installation is a montage of her practice straddling cosmetics and artistic mediums. She categorises her close-up editorial photographs as “social commentary” and her diagrams as “pseudoscience”. In her hands, everyday beauty items become unfamiliar or uncanny, presented as sculptural objects cast in resin. Magyar prompts her viewers to question their beliefs, to confront their raw selves beneath social pressure and to peel back the layers of the beauty industry.

The boom in beauty pageants in the 1970s coincided with greater access to television, reaching a large global audience. Beauty companies seized this opportunity to market their products through sponsorship. Their – mostly male – CEOs would sit on the judging panel, scoring contestants on their physical appearance.

Off stage, board games targeted at young girls glamourised the pageant world. Beauty competitions were also organised for female staff within companies. An internal magazine from the Wellcome Foundation shows the winner of Miss Wellcome in 1974: a senior technician in the chemical development laboratories at Dartford.

Raphael Albert’s documentation of Black beauty pageants in 1960s and 70s London depicts a vibrant community, against the backdrop of the racism prevalent in British mainstream media in which Black women were almost invisible. The photographs show how communities co-opted and refashioned beauty pageants to provide a space for African-Caribbean self-expression. They also celebrate Black beauty practices centred around the beauty salon. Albert’s personal involvement in establishing the Miss Black and Beautiful contest in 1970 helps to create an insider gaze into the world he depicts.

The act of body modification in the radical pursuit of pleasure is certainly about my transness, but more importantly, it is about body autonomy.
E-J Scott

Plastic surgical procedures have shifted from medical to cosmetic, becoming part of the beauty regime. Cosmetic surgeries provoke debates around values, ethics, safety, agency and power structures.

Access to safe body-modifying procedures holds very different meaning to people with distinct motivations and in different parts of the world. The fundamental question is about choice. When informed decisions are made, bodily transformation has the potential to be a source of empowerment and a process of self-actualisation.

The following display contains imagery depicting surgical procedures and human tissue. If you would like to avoid these materials, the next section, THEUNSEEN, is just behind this curtain. Please speak to a member of staff if you need any assistance.

Rhinoplasty – nose reconstruction surgery – was part of a growing market for cosmetic operations in 1400s Europe. Using skin grafting to encourage nose growth, the ‘Italian method’ was popularised by Bolognese surgeon, Gaspare Tagliacozzi. It has roots in Byzantine medicine and techniques imported from the Indian subcontinent over 1,000 years ago. It was mostly used to treat disfigured soldiers and syphilis victims during the 1490s outbreak.

The pain and physical exertion involved in the surgery meant some looked for alternatives, such as wearing a prothetic nose made of wax, ivory or metal, tied to the face with ribbon.

The Disobedient Nose is a series of photographic works about “a nose that doesn’t want to be tamed”. Iran sees the greatest number of rhinoplasties in the world. Many aspire to have the procedure, and this is often openly discussed across generations. The London-based Iranian artist Shirin Fathi uses her own face to explore the inherent defiance of women making their own choices against society’s biases.

Fathi experiments with the shifting nature of identity in relation to cosmetic surgery through roleplay, prostheses and make-up. In one portrait she mimics a male patient in Renaissance medical illustrations. Another references an early Indian technique of skin grafting.

دماغ نافرمان مجموعه عکس هایی است درباره یک بینی که نمی خواهد مهار شود. ایران یکی از بالاترین میزان جراحی بینی را در جهان دارا است. جراحی بینی بین نسل های مختلف همیشه مورد بحث بوده است. هنرمند ایرانی در این مجموعه با استفاده از صورت خود موضوع جراحی بینی را مورد چالش قرارداده است و سعی می کند درباره عضوی از بدن حرف بزند که تغییر را نمی پذیرد. این پرتره ها از طریق اجرا و نقش آفرینی، طراحی های پزشکی قرن شانزدهم را به تصویر می کشد. هنرمند در یک عکس خود را به یک مرد سفیدپوست دوره رنسانس مبدل کرده است. در عکسی دیگر با کشیدن خطی روی صورتش متاثر از تکنیک قدیمی جراحی بینی هندی با برداشتن پوست از بخش های مجاورصورت نحوه ساختن بینی را نشان می دهد. شیرین فتحی پروژه تحقیقاتی خود را این گونه آغاز کرد که خود را برای انجام عمل های زیبایی به پزشکان مشتاق نشان داد و به کلینیک های جراحی بسیاری مراجعه کرد. در مرحله بعد با استفاده از تکنیک های مجسمه سازی و ساختن قالب صورت خود و با استفاده از به کارگیری ترفند های پزشکی در زمینه جراحی نقش هنرمند و جراح را عوض کرد و این پرسش را طرح کرد که آیا یک جراح تخصص کافی را برای شناخت زیبایی همانند یک مجسمه ساز دارد؟ و مهم تر این که آیا او به عنوان یک هنرمند می تواند نقش یک جراح را بازی کند؟

Label translation by Shirin Fathi, artist and curator

Ivo Pitanguy was a household name in Brazil, having performed over 40,000 operations over four decades and trained over 500 doctors from around the world. Here a volunteer is being examined topless in front of over a dozen of Pitanguy’s protégés in exchange for a free operation.

From his 5-year-long photography project, Love Me, Zed Nelson captures disconcerting moments in the clinic to confront us with the complex power dynamics of cosmetic surgeries. The photographs are also reminders that these are serious medical operations that come with their own risks.

Ivo Pitanguy was a household name in Brazil, having performed over 40,000 operations over four decades and trained over 500 doctors from around the world. Here a volunteer is being examined topless in front of over a dozen of Pitanguy’s protégés in exchange for a free operation. Photographer Zed Nelson captures such disconcerting moments in the clinic to confront us with the complex power dynamics of cosmetic surgeries. The photographs are also reminders that these are serious medical operations that come with their own risks.

E-J Scott, founder of Museum of Transology

The everyday beauty and personal care objects donated by local trans, non-binary and intersex communities include handwritten notes by the donors sharing intimate stories of their journeys. They shine a light on how these seemingly mundane products carry meaningful memories and reflect the role beauty plays in the path towards self-actualisation.

In this photo, you can see me holding up a jar of my own chest tissue. In front of the photo, you can see the same artefact. A cis-gaze will inevitably try to piece the body and the person back together. But this optical exercise defies resolution: I have curated my gender with intentionality. My intention is that your inspection does not interrupt my self-reflection.

Trans people look at me differently: they know what it is they see, without needing to piece me back together, locating my gender phenomenology in an instant as a wholeness, not a decoupling. This is the difference between spectatorship and recognition.

E-J Scott, founder of Museum of Transology

Magic is science we don’t yet understand.
Arthur C. Clarke

When designer Lauren Bowker visited Wellcome Collection’s library in 2012 to research early uses of alchemy, she was inspired to found THEUNSEEN. Through research and innovation it sets out to apply material science “to reveal to the world what it cannot see for itself”.

Prompted by her interest in skin as the medium between our internal landscape and how we express ourselves, Bowker subsequently transformed her studio into a skin-based colour cosmetic brand. She believes that the ubiquitous nature of cosmetics has huge potential to drive real changes in the way we understand the world.

Incorporating two of their latest innovative pigments, THEUNSEEN BEAUTY has created two new interactive works for this exhibition, The Black Morphew and ĀTMA.

The Black Morphew

To experience The Black Morphew, take a photo of this sculpture with the flash on your mobile phone.

Please do not touch the sculpture.

In this third and final section, you are invited to immerse, reflect and connect. Experience three major new commissions and artworks – a short feature film, a towering anthropomorphic sculpture and a multi-screen installation.

Either through their own lived experiences or collaborative consultation, the artists each question long-standing constructs and initiate new conversations. They explore the joy of self-expression against racial and gender norms, the long road to self-knowledge and self-acceptance and the complications of existing in our increasingly digital world today. Together, they triumphantly mark the beauty that lives in us, individually and collectively.

This film and portrait project responds to the absence of Black Queer visibility in British national history. It originates from art historian and musician, David McAlmont’s research of the Windsor Beauties – portraits of ladies at the court of Charles II (1630–85) who were celebrated for their appearance and elegance. The film is set in the stately homes Kenwood House, Petworth House and Park and Hampton Court Palace.

Interweaving grand manifestos, intimate interviews and short fictional scenes, it explores why some forms of beauty are more acceptable and highly valued than others. Through new portraits of six Black Queer Britons it offers up an expanded depiction of British beauty for the 21st century.

The Virgin of Guadalupe painting at the beginning of this exhibition was one of the key inspirations for the project.

This four-part commission centres on the crushing weight of beauty ideals that are passed from one generation to another. An autobiographical work, it explores the complex – at times fraught – relationship with beauty passed from a mother to her African American/Sephardic Jewish daughter. It was created by an anonymous New York-based artist as her masked persona ‘Narcissister’. The artist’s initial refusal to conform fundamentally shaped the creation of Narcissister as a personification of defiance.

A three-metre-tall anthropomorphic sculpture consisting of her late mother’s belongings acts as the focal point of the commission. It crystalises the tension between the beauty her mother embodied and the artist’s deconstructing of it, the paradox of accepting it and the transcendence of redefining it.

Please be advised the following room contains fast moving visual content on a multiscreen installation and video projection.

If you’d like to avoid this work, there is an alternative exit next to the sculpture by the far end of the curtain.

This experiential multimedia installation explores contemporary beauty culture, especially the impact of social media and new digital technologies on global trends. It was created by Xcessive Aesthetics, an international, interdisciplinary all-female architecture collective.

The room is designed to evoke the sensory experience of a nightclub bathroom, a semi-public space where complete strangers might feel safe to connect with each other through shared experiences and a mutual affinity for beauty.

While some of the videos on mirrored screens speak to the potentially harmful nature of beauty ideals in the virtual world, the installation also highlights the opportunities digital spaces offer as platforms for experimentation and community-building.

Curator

Janice Li

Curatorial team

Adam Rose

Sophie Schneider

Exhibition Project Managers

Bryony Harris

Nelly Ekström

Matt Nightingale

Emma Smith

Registrars

David Chan

Lisa Evans

Production Manager

Chris Kingham

Audio Visual

Ollie Isaac

Jeremy Bryans

Ricardo Barbosa

Joshua McCrow

Conservators

Kath Knowles

Robert Spicer

Sarah Bird

Digital Guide production

Wellcome Collection Digital Engagement

Wellcome Multimedia & Audiovisual Team

Exhibition design

Pup Architects

Graphic design

Wolfe Hall

Typeface

Seb McLauchlan

Lighting design

Satu Streatfield

Exhibition Technicians

Lawrence Corby

Lucy Woodhouse

Joseph Richards

Keith Martin

Alex Drew

Interpretation Advisor

Minnie Scott

Audio guide

VocalEyes

Justin Margovan

Lewis Sellars

Antonina Stulova

BSL guide

Samuel Dore

Ahmed Mudawi

Alexandra Shaw

Louis Neethling

Ricardo Barbosa

Exhibition build

Sam Forster Associates

Graphic Production

Omni Colour

We would like to thank all of the artists, lenders, contributors, researchers and colleagues who have generously lent their works, expertise and ideas, and have contributed to the planning and the delivery of the exhibition.

Special thanks to exhibition consultants Emma Dabiri, Jill Burke, Caroline Vout, E-J Scott.

Our gratitude also goes to the following individuals whose contributions have been integral to the research, development and realisation of the exhibition.

Marcella Lagalante, Lydia Caston, Ruth Hibbard, Jennifer Rampling, William Schupbach, Ross MacFarlane, Adrian Plau, Gabriela Daniels, Kimberley Burrows, Natasha McEnroe, Julia Nurse, Angela Saward, Susan North, Elma Brenner, Geneviève Dumas, Edwina Ehrman, Zorian Clayton, Oriole Cullen, Daniel Glaser, Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, Bindi Vora, Karla Sanchez, Stephanie Blythman, Carlie Pendleton, Navjot Mangat, Neha Vyas, Sam Batstone, Yoojin Choi

Where no credit line is shown on object labels, items have been purchased as material for the exhibition. We are committed to respecting copyright for works on display but if you have reason to believe any content infringes yours or someone else’s rights please contact a member of staff.

A programme of live events will accompany the exhibition. During Light’s Up opening times the gallery will have increased light levels. For Relaxed Openings the gallery will be quieter and have more even lighting.

Please check www.wellcomecollection.org or ask a member of staff for more details.