Unveiling Beauty

Spanish born, Berlin-based artist Vermibus is best-known for his modified advertising posters critiquing contemporary beauty standards. The artist routinely collects advertising posters from the street to make up the raw material for his work in the studio. The artist then modifies the advertisements using solvents to disfigure the model's faces and brand logos. Once the transformation is complete, he reintroduces the adverts back into their original context, hijacking their visibility to present his own subversive, anti-consumerist messages.

By subverting how human figures are represented in public space, Vermibus' interventions become part of a broader conversation of social significance by questioning who has the power and authority to communicate and create meaning in shared spaces.

Vermibus brought his haunting faces to the Nuart Festival in 2017, where he performed a series of advertising takeovers throughout the city centre.