Selfie Misuse
Sept 19 - Oct 20, 2015
Dietel Gallery, Emma Willard School
Artist Statement
The two person exhibition at Emma Willard required me to create a rework of my artbook, Helpful Tips for Taking a Nude Selfie, originally made in March 2015. Using already existing digital images, I appropriated my own work in my artist book to create a gallery experience called “Selfie Misuse.”
Social media has made the world smaller, allowing us to share our feelings, knowledge and opinions with everyone. And how can we not? Sharing is a natural instinct in humans. When we share with others, we create a relationship of trust, which flows back and helps us feel secure.
In today’s sharing environment, a large part of our identity is constructed usingn the posts we share. But, when we identify with the content that we share, we give our audience power over us. Everything we post on social media is an invitation to have our identities interpreted, dissected, taken out of context and judged. The things we share only can be misused to misrepresent us. "Selfie Misuse" takes my most personal identifying feature: my face. And I cut, distort and appropriate it into different contexts to warn viewers of the potential dangers of online sharing.