Clean Look

ARCO Lisbon, Lisbon (PT), 28–31.05.2026
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town (ZA), 19–22.02.206

Clean Look is a series of a sculptural works (different sizes) in casted glass and aluminium in which facial form appears suspended between exposure and containment. Derived from cosmetic face-mask moulds, the piece evokes the face as a surface to be corrected, sealed and standardised rather than expressed. The industrial precision of aluminium encounters the fragility and transparency of glass, producing an object that oscillates between protection and vulnerability, cosmetic refinement and bodily alienation.

This work departs from the notion of the “clean look”: the contemporary aesthetic regime of smoothness, uniformity and erased imperfection elevated by wellness and fashion cultures into a normative ideal. I understand this language not as neutral, but as a mechanism of regulation linked to histories of eugenics and to the internalised forms of self-surveillance that structure contemporary life, particularly for female-identifying bodies.

Text by NÉBOA gallery and Mariella Franzoni