INSTALLATIONVIEW @ DIANA NEW YORK, 2023
Inscribed in a time of „instagramable exhibitions“ and „designed to like“ content, the ongoing project shows depictions and retouches of viral beauty hypes, filter obsessions, body transformations and modifications of networked images, documenting a current zeitgeist.
My artistic practice has a long history of treating virtuality as an extension of ourselves. I focus on liminal spaces of the internet to research bodies in transition. Instagram appears as one of these spaces where humans transition from their physicality to hyper-potent and hybrid versions of themselves. The platform, with its curated feeds, serves as an intriguing microcosm of our obsession with the individual self and its construction. I treat Instagram feeds as archival libraries showcasing a glimpse into our eternal quest for self-presentation, creating an afterlife-like eternity where virtual bodies are inscribed in a ping-pong game of a strangely hyper-personalized world.
The site-specific installation transforms the exhibition venue into a transitional space of digital ephemera, oscillating between the gravital and virtual, fostering the alignment of both realms.
I manipulate and retouch selfies of my photographic archive accordingly to images shown on my instagram feed to open a conversation on the impact networked images have on our identity. Using photo editing retouch as a tool, photographs become my playground expanding the limitations of our physical existence. I experiment with the idea of „becoming an image“ or what I define as „internet appropriation of the body“.
The portraits’ blurriness occur through the expansive overuse of editing tools leading towards a slow dysmorphia of identities.
I use the effect of light reflective elements in the space, indicating crosspoints of a digital grid, that are being activated by the smartphone‘s flash when taking a photograph in the exhibition space.
INSTALLATIONVIEW @ DIANA NEW YORK, 2023