Extra Credit

Selfie: Us and Them

As a person who takes selfies, this was a really interesting exhibition. For me, this exhibition is a critic to people who take selfies and  at the same time is a critic to  those who criticize people who take selfies. At the end of the day people should take pictures however they like. The biggest theme in this exhibition was identity and people's perception. Milcah Bassel had a video piece where she constructed photo grids. Another piece done by Stephanie Quispilaya, where the artist’s face was placed in the body of a pig, several times,  doing different actions or being a different self.  

I feel like all the artists address their identity and the selfies as what people want them to be seem as. Their identity becomes problematic based on what people think about them. The strongest critique in this exhibition was  what we talked at the beginning of the semester, we live in a spectacle. The reason why we use filter is to look a certain way.  Society has made us think that in order to be accepted we should follow the “beauty standards”  and that is why a lot of people use filters to make their bodies look slimmer  or to make their waist look smaller.

The artist named Goncalves had pictures of herself and those pictures were accompanied by phrases that were said by some of her family members. Her pictures were from when she was a little girl to when she was a teenager. Some of the phrases were out of place and would say things that were mean.  For me her critique here is how people would comment on  other people’s picture and say mean things without thinking of the consequences. Also, it was said that the family members didn’t know what those phrases were for and also the family member are anonym, just like people who anonymously comment atrocious things  to insult other, they are often are what we call trolls.

Another relevant piece that caught my attention was Mediha’ video,  where the artist had no face and then she would appear screaming. The artist explain how there is a lot of competition among girls. That people have an expectation for women to look at certain way and many times while pleasing people that’s when girls lose themselves. In addition to losing themselves, this often bring other issues such as depression, anxiety, and so on.

This exhibition does a great job at using media and representing how media has evolve. For example using meme as a form of portrait, this is something that came from the internet that before wasn’t as popular. Also the video component of this exhibition uses the media. Another of the pieces was an instagram page that instead of having selfies of the artist, it was just photos pointing up and seeing what surrounds the artist. I think the curators in this exhibition want to raise awareness of the social pressure that comes from selfies and that we must reevaluate our values when it comes to the identity and how we force other to form a false identity that would often lead to negative consequences.