Gretchen Andrew (b. 1989, Los Angeles, California) is an artist known for her innovative integration of traditional art forms with advanced technologies such as robotics, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. She challenges power structures through art, glitter, and code, gaining recognition for her playful subversion of prestigious art and political institutions, including Frieze, The Whitney Biennial, ArtForum, and The Turner Prize. Andrew trained with artist Billy Childish in London from 2012 to 2017, which influenced her unique approach blending classical painting with digital technology. In 2018, the V&A Museum published her book Search Engine Art, which explores the intersection of art and digital culture. Her work has been featured in major publications such as The Washington Post, Fast Company, Forbes, and The Financial Times.
Andrew’s Facetune Portraits series critically engages with the digital beauty standards promoted by AI-driven filters on platforms like TikTok and Zoom. Using custom robotics, she translates these filters into oil paintings, making the invisible process of digital modification visible. The series features portraits of famous women worldwide, depicting both their unaltered faces and their AI-enhanced counterparts. This dual representation reveals the tension between natural beauty and the idealized, homogenized versions of women promoted by AI. Each portrait captures the conflict between reality and digital desire, with brushstrokes symbolizing the friction between human diversity and a singular beauty ideal.
The Facetune Portraits: Universal Beauty series specifically explores how AI-driven filters erase individuality, creating a uniform standard of perfection. Featuring 100 women from 100 different countries, the portraits reveal how digital manipulation reshapes faces and bodies into a singular, “perfect” form. The juxtaposition of the unaltered face with the algorithmically enhanced version exposes the growing influence of technology on beauty standards.
Andrew’s work also engages with cultural institutions like the San Francisco Ballet, where Facetune Portraits were exhibited alongside ballet dancers—figures long associated with unattainable beauty standards. This pairing underscores the absurdity of striving for perfection in a world where technology distorts reality. By incorporating ballet dancers, Andrew critiques how both cultural icons and digital technology enforce narrow definitions of beauty, encouraging viewers to reconsider their own perceptions of identity.
Through her work, Andrew sparks critical discussions about the role of technology in shaping societal beauty standards, establishing herself as a leading figure at the intersection of art and digital culture.