Portraits of Society

“Caricature breaks the harmony of absolute beauty by emphasizing a single aspect in a one-sided way...It lowers the sublime, distorts what is pleasing, and deforms beauty itself.” —Karl Rosenkranz, Æsthetic of Ugliness (1853)

“Portraits of Society” translates this reflection into a visual manifesto. The project offers a critical analysis of contemporary life through a series of makeup works conceived as visual caricatures, each distilling a specific social phenomenon into a distorted æsthetic.

The narrative unfolds through five principal characters, each embodying a distinct tension of our era: from the performative faces of social media and the rigid beauty standards imposed by digital platforms, to the media’s reductionist portrayal of the “average voter.” The series culminates in the exploration of AI tools and hyper-filtering, where new identities are forged—entirely detached from biological reality. The theoretical framework draws inspiration from the intellectual legacies of Umberto Eco and Pier Paolo Pasolini, alongside the visceral cinematography of Matteo Garrone and the surrealist lens of Jaromil Jireš.

At its core, “Portraits of Society” reclaims caricature not merely as a stylistic device, but as a historically significant æsthetic tool. It reflects on the evolution of “ugliness” as a provocative force, tracing its path from classical artistic traditions to the saturated, filtered landscapes of contemporary visual culture.

Ultimately, these portraits do not seek to evoke laughter but to provoke a gaze. By embracing the “ugly” and the disproportionate, the project strips away the glossy surface of modern æsthetics to reveal the grotesque truths hidden beneath the filter.

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