Clean Look

ARCO Lisbon, Lisbon (PT), 28–31.05.2026
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town (ZA), 19–22.02.2026

Clean Look is a series of 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: an aesthetic regime defined by smoothness, uniformity, and the systematic erasure of imperfection. Popularised through fashion and wellness cultures, it promotes an ideal of (unanttainable) perfectionism: an apparently effortless, re-created naturalness produced through intense self-discipline. This form of performative wellness can be genealogically traced back to eugenic and scientific racism, as well as to the interiorised narcissistic psycho-power in which the contemporary individual is no longer conscious of their own subjection. Cleanliness thus functions as a form of aesthetic anaesthesia: nothing protrudes, nothing disrupts. Davila Rubio reads this aesthetic regime not as neutral, but as a disciplinary language that aligns the notion of beauty with conservative and normative ideals. Interiorised practices of body care become inseparable from social legitimacy and self-confidence, forming an invisible armour —one disproportionately designed for female-identifying bodies.

Excerpt from the original text by Mariella Franzoni