Slovakian artist Evelyn Bencicova (b. 1992) returns to Aesthetica for the second time with works from the Artificial Tears series. A vision of the future, the collection assesses what it means to exist within today’s increasingly factitious world, and how this will progress where truths are no longer what they seem. How will we distinguish between humanity and machines? What constitutes the individual? Bencicova offers a consistent and uncanny sense of elegance, married with an unsettling and overarching tone of sterility. Pallid grey surroundings are a canvas for unrealised and perhaps unidentifiable emotions – blank and anonymous. The images centre around a female figure who – alienated from the lens – is transfixed by performative emotion. Playing with notions of perfection and clean aesthetics, each photograph becomes almost mechanistic, separating the concept of autonomy from replicable and predictable patterns of behaviour. www.evelynbencicova.com.