The Invisible Hand

How did the human body become an object of discipline, desire, improvement and standardization in the twentieth century, and why does that logic still resonate today? The Invisible Hand is an examination of the ideal human body as a cultural construction. From the racial ideology of the early twentieth century - that has led to a global humanitarian catastrophe - to today's culture of fitness, beauty and self-optimization. It is a multidisciplinary investigation into how the body and beauty became instruments of ideology and how internalized mechanisms continue to shape contemporary society and have an impact on the self-image of the individual.

There is a historical continuity in ideas about the body as something that must be shaped, improved, disciplined and standardised. Power structures change, ideologies change, but the body remains a site over which power can be exercised. The Invisible Hand does not criticize health or fitness per se, but examines when a healthy ideal turns into a standard that is used to judge, discipline or exploit people. This project recognizes that the desire to be healthy and beautiful is fundamentally human and valuable. The critical question only arises when a society generates a particular physical ideal universal, attaches value to it, and then systematically holds people accountable for achieving it.