Skin Deep: A Review of Zanele Muholi at Instituto Moreira Salles São Paulo

In his book “Saving Beauty” (Die Errettung des Schönen, 2015), Byung-Chul Han argues that the “aesthetic of smoothness” defines the contemporary world. From the sleek surfaces of ultra-modern cell-phone screens to works of art, everything is so smooth, fluid and polished that it evokes no feeling other than absolute positivity, without resistance. According to Han, in the work of Jeff Koons, for example, there is no room for negativity: “There is no disaster, break, mark, risk, or seam.” There are no scars and, therefore, no history or memory to be recalled. There is only the imperative of the present—smooth and entirely reflective—a kind of mirror that reveals what has already been massively exposed on social media or within an imagination controlled by capital. It is the prime space for seeking automatic likes or easily accepting what is imposed upon us for immediate consumption. Obviously, this aesthetic is not interested in anything diverse or oppositional as criticism (since it disguises itself as unrestricted freedom of expression), as any opposition tends to be repelled as a discriminatory act against the desires of the majority (or the artificially generated number of followers controlled by social media platforms).