Sum of the parts
Sum of the Parts consists of small oil paintings on torn canvas, dissections of faces from appropriated selfie images of girls, found on the internet. The face parts are arranged in a grid gesturing at the Instagram format, where these images were found.
My recent research relates to photography and temporality, the passage of time, its recording, the freezing of memories and the production of a visual artifacts or traces. I am observing the selfie culture that is flourishing all over the internet, especially those made by girls and women.
For me trace is a marking of time, a recording of existence, of being human. Memories mark time and yet are fluid, inaccurate, fallible and fickle, until they gradually (or suddenly) vanish. I have been considering the connection between memory, trace and the extremely public selfie phenomenon.
Selfie photography and photography in general, are by nature reductive 2-dimensional processes, eliminating extraneous or contextual material and exhibiting only one semblance of truth. By using the traditional additive medium, oil on canvas, I am slowing down my looking, observing deeply while thinking about the velocity of images endlessly streaming through our devices, and how fractured our attention is through this.
The personal examination that used to be made with a hand mirror leaving no trace, is now made in the same manner as people examine and investigate their identity and visual presence, using the front cameras on their mobile devices. Each self-portrait image we make becomes a trace, a gesture in time, similar to the motion and movement of holding up the hand mirror but retaining a permanent while still intangible digital artifact. This image becomes a memory aid, a frozen moment in time documenting and recording the self for future reference and for willful dissemination across the internet, an aid to memory, which crumbles, becomes worn down, more and more transparent, ultimately vanishing.
The purposefulness of the female self-traces being released out into the world as a trail, as mementos, or lures is intriguing. Within my research I am looking at self-representations of beauty, our agency in the virtual world, histories that are being written incrementally, registered by these images, and the impact they have on the physical self.