The 20 small images were photographed on the artist’s travels between 2004 and 2006 through Latvia, Russia, Morocco and Japan, as well as in London and the Netherlands. Generally shot as busts against simple backdrops, the series takes a stronger cue from traditional portraiture than previous works did.

If the show has a theme, it might be diversity; at times the photos seem to be playing a game of compare and contrast. A pale young girl sports a mane of curly red hair, while a dark-skinned woman wears an elegant burka. A skinny white boy proudly sticks out his bony ribs, visible through a skin-tight hot-pink shirt; a chubby black youth poses regally in profile with crossed arms against a red brick wall. Van Meene adopts a pimples-and-all approach that nonetheless presents each of these young people as gorgeous in his or her own right. There is no apparent political motivation underlying this globe-trotting project, but by casting her eclectic subjects—even those who are wall-eyed, weak-chinned or have outie belly buttons—as sensations unto themselves, the artist discards conventional ideals of beauty while making pointedly beautiful work. — Sarah Valdez