Hässlichkeit/Ugliness (2023) by Moshtari Hilal between Evolutionary Aesthetics and Normalism

Mosthari Hilal is a young visual artist born in Kabul in 1993 and raised in Germany. In 2023, she published her first literary work, which brings together her experiences and reflections on the concept of ugliness. According to her, this concept develops at the boundary between “nature” and “nurture”, inextricably linked to both human physiology and the social and cultural dimension. A person’s appearance is fundamental to their identity, especially in an image-dominated society such as ours. For an artist like Hilal, the concept of beauty is not just a category imposed from outside, but a dimension that has tormented her internally and informs her entire existence as an artist. Her choice to write a hybrid-genre text—somewhere between a picture book, poetry, essay, and autofiction—demonstrates that this discourse is developed not only in content but also in the form. She selects autofiction and self-centered images as her expressive medium both because it allows her to creatively explore her identity and because it entails a profound reflection on authenticity and the nature of literary mimesis. Given the main characteristics of Hilal’s work, this article has two objectives: First, it aims to show how the concepts of beauty and ugliness of Moshtari Hilal are shaped by power dynamics involving gender, postcolonialism, ableism, and today’s social-media culture. To grasp the richness of its conceptualisation, it is necessary to consider it against the backdrop of evolutionary and philosophical aesthetics, postcolonial thought and normalism, from which it originated. Secondly, it aims to highlight the formal hybridity of Hilal’s text, which consists of poems, images and essayistic passages, and to show its connection with the theme of ugliness.