What Is Behind A Smile? examines the most ubiquitous gesture in human interaction—especially within moments of gathering, both personal and political. A smile – universal yet personal – can be expressed to intentionally manipulate for nefarious gain or conversely, be a genuine articulation of kindness and joy.

Through silkscreening, performance, and photography, I pair my own smiling mouth with that of high-profile women—some revered, others reviled. Figures have included Ghislaine Maxwell, Ayn Rand, Hillary Clinton, Mother Teresa, Marie Antoinette, Angela Davis, Aileen Wuornos, and Coco Chanel. These women are contentious individuals, equally adored on one hand as much as they are hated on the other.

Each diptych presents my own smile first, always positioned on top. This choice calls attention to complicity; I am not judge but participant, a subject who has also been shaped, flattened, or consumed by systems of visibility. Cropped, anonymized, and rendered in stark, grainy halftone, the smiles become symbols—echoes of a broader cultural pathology where moral judgment is shaped by surface and spectacle.

These images act as psychological mirrors, collapsing binaries of good and evil while implicating the viewer in the uneasy space between performance and perception. In doing so, What Is Behind A Smile? explores the aesthetics of power, the dissonance between surface charm and what might be concealed beneath.