Her large scale representations of the body and face, in which the focus is mostly on the mouth and eyes, raise questions about perfection, death, and eternity. Fields of tension between fascination and shudder arise. In a first step, Holthusen photographs her models in the studio, but creates new, idealized photoprint portraits from scratch by digitally superimposing different physiognomies. Living Dolls is a study of human and doll appearance mixture. Playing with the stylistic means of classical portraits and the idealization of the modern concept of Beauty.

Upon completing her studies, Corinna Holthusen began specializing in the art of image processing. The themes of her works cover the convergence of beauty, disgust, artificiality and naturality. Using digital means, the artist shatters pictures of perfect faces and bodies to subsequently reassemble them through several physiognomies in order to haptically pry them open at the surface, ultimately also by means of material application, for example using acrylic paint. The persons depicted in her works never exist in this form. We believe to be seeing an everyday ideal of beauty, yet begin t question this given a different context. Corinna Holthusen unsettles the viewer of her works by playing with the stylistic means of classical portraits and the idealization of the modern concept of beauty. The viewer recognizes the identity of the familiar aesthetic ideal, though manipulation is clearly visible. Corinna Holthusen's pictures challenge our human persona to critically examine and question the photographic images of perfection and beauty all around us.