In Universal Beauty, Gretchen Andrew transforms the spectacle of the Miss Universe competition into a digital video work that exposes the homogenizing force of AI-driven beauty standards. Across the screen, contestants from 9 different countries gradually morph into the same nose, lips, and face—an algorithmic convergence where individuality disappears. What begins as a celebration of global diversity collapses into uniformity, revealing how a single AI vision of beauty overwrites cultural and personal distinctions.
Unlike the seamless, invisible edits of social media filters, Universal Beauty makes the process visible. The morphing is imperfect, reminding us of the distortion, erasure, and quiet violence hidden within the pursuit of digital “perfection.”
The video becomes a double portrait: the women as they are, and the women as AI insists they should be. The tension lies in the slippage between the two, as faces stretch and collapse into sameness. Where once there was difference, now only conformity remains.
Universal Beauty reveals not only the absurdity of a monocultural standard of beauty but also the scars it leaves, psychological, cultural, and visual. It confronts our collective desire not simply to be beautiful, but to be made acceptable by both peers and algorithms.