American Beauty is the outcome of a piece of research whose aim is to discuss standards of beauty and behaviour in American society from a Brazilian point of view. The beach is the main setting, a place where temporary spaces become an extension of the home and where each person’s privacy and culture are revealed through the way these micro-spaces are built. On the southeastern coast of the United States, habits and belongings demand attention: a plasticity inclined to excess, folded into the ordinariness of a life, turns up in the course of a simple day at the beach — hair colours, long artificial nails, shiny lipsticks, extravagant outfits and wigs, defined muscles and saturated colours. Observing and working inside this context leads the artist to reflect on social matters that surround a recurring subject of our time: identity. At the level of one person we have the portrait, showing how a set of accessories, hairstyles and postures gives a certain singularity to a personality. But looking at the whole, and keeping in mind the roots and influences that helped shape American identity, the pictures can be read as echoes of the power of a media that insists on an obsession with beauty and perfection. Once those ideals are translated into a controlled system, such as the Hollywood film or advertising industries, they use models and narratives mixed into history itself, creating the illusion that living perfection is possible. Yet the same elements, brought back into real life, take on a kitsch, commonplace aspect that reminds us we are human and therefore imperfect.