The Discomfort Is the Point

The resulting works are unsettling, with the robotic scribbles cutting lines through the women’s bodies and making their smiling faces unrecognisable—but that discomfort is the point.

Gretchen Andrew’s Facetune Portraits transform digital beauty into something unsettling—and intentionally so.

In her Facetune Portraits, artist Gretchen Andrew confronts the visual language of perfection. By using robotic motion to distort images that once embodied idealized beauty, she reveals the hidden violence in the algorithmic pursuit of flawlessness.

These mechanical marks act as both interruption and translation—taking the smooth, artificial polish of digital editing and breaking it open. The distortions reflect how invisible technologies manipulate the human form until it fits an impossible aesthetic code.

Andrew’s discomforting approach isn’t destruction; it’s revelation. The blurred smiles and fragmented faces ask viewers to reconsider what we find beautiful, and why. In a culture built on seamlessness, her art insists on fracture, evidence, and truth.