Compliance Audit of Beauty (2025)
What if beauty had to pass a compliance review?
This evolving body of work reimagines aesthetic judgment through the lens of financial regulation. Just as banks audit clients for risk, this series audits artworks—and, by extension, cultural ideals of beauty.
Each piece is subjected to hidden due diligence: flagged, approved, or rejected based on invisible, algorithmic, and cultural criteria. The result is a conceptual art exhibit where beauty is never innocent—it's interrogated, documented, red-flagged, and, sometimes, discarded.
Inspired by KYC (Know Your Customer), AML (Anti-Money Laundering), and internal audit frameworks, this project reframes art curation as a compliance exercise. It merges high fashion, AI surrealism, and procedural language—turning the gallery into a regulatory war room.
The audit is visual. The beauty is suspicious. The compliance is art.
01
The KYC Room (Know Your Customer, Know Your Composition)
This onboarding chamber introduces visitors to the compliance framework of beauty.
Portraits and still-life images are labeled like due diligence files: “Pending,” “High-Risk,” or “Approved.”
Wall text mimics KYC intake forms:
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Source of Beauty: Disclosed or concealed
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Beneficial Owner of Image: AI, artist, audience
Every work is assessed as if beauty were a financial transaction. The message is clear: aesthetic value is never neutral.
02
The Red Flag Room
Something feels off—but you can’t quite explain it.
This space is filled with distorted faces, overly symmetrical images, and uncanny AI glitches. It’s the “Suspicious Activity Report” section of the gallery.
Works are tagged with fake audit language like:
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“Overexposure indicates layering attempt.”
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“Color saturation exceeds regulatory threshold.”
The absurdity of financial jargon clashes with aesthetic judgment, forcing viewers to question both.
03
The Shell Gallery (Layering & Laundering)
Inspired by shell companies and layering tactics in money laundering, this gallery-within-a-gallery features artworks stacked behind translucent surfaces.
Abstract works are arranged in “transparency folders,” with frosted acrylic, onion-skin layers, and masked elements suggesting concealment.
Labels include:
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“Ultimate Beneficial Owner Unknown”
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“Intended Viewer Obfuscated”
Beauty here becomes a shell structure—plausible, polished, and intentionally hard to trace.
04
The Audit Trail
A step-by-step autopsy of the creative process.
This section showcases the evolution of a piece—from first MidJourney prompt to final image—with blacked-out “redactions” in between.
Each wall mimics an internal audit file. Text blocks mark milestones:
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Draft v1: Rejected – lacks narrative alignment
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Draft v4: Flagged for resemblance to known pattern
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Final: Approved under exception clause
It’s transparency as performance—a forensic archive of how beauty is edited, revised, and ultimately manipulated to meet expectations.
