AI Image
Contemporary Visual Art
A smile, carefully maintained.
Calculated Smile
about
Created between Poland and the United States from 2021 to 2025, this work grew from my observations of smiling as a form of social performance. Living between different cultural environments made me more attentive to the ways people adjust their expressions to ease interaction, conceal discomfort, and meet the expectations of a situation.
The work considers the distance between affect and expression, and the quiet labor involved in maintaining that distance. A smile can smooth an encounter, but it can also become something practiced, measured, and detached from feeling. Against a landscape of accelerating technology, the work asks what happens to the emotional demands placed on the individual.
deliverables
AI Image
Generative Image-making
Affective Inquiry
Social Performance
YITING WANG (ICHN)
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