Much has been said about millennial women and the Internet. Mostly negative things. Mostly along the lines that they’re attention-seeking and selfie-obsessed.
Organized by Off Topic, a Taipei-based art event organization, and curated by American artist Grace Miceli of the online exhibition space, Art Baby Gallery, Why Didn’t You Like My Pic? (為什麼你不喜歡我的照片?) flips that notion in on itself.
The joint exhibition featuring 16 female artists from around the world, including three Taiwanese artists and Miceli herself, opened on Friday at Pon Ding (朋丁) project space in Taipei. The artists, who are all in their 20s, were chosen for owing their success to social media, whether through cultivating a large Instagram or Facebook following or having work go viral.
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
“It’s about wresting back control,” Miceli tells me.
The 26-year-old, whose whimsy tattoos — of sunflowers, knives and whatnot — matches her colorful drawings. Miceli curated her first group show, Girls at Night on the Internet, at Brooklyn’s Alt Space last year. She sees the current exhibition as a sequel. While it continues to explore the theme of social media having a positive impact on the lives of young women, being held in Taiwan, audiences will inevitably view the artwork through their own cultural lens.
IN CONTROL
Photo courtesy of Off Topic
Miceli thinks that the messages in her artwork — for instance, the allure of nostalgia — is universal.
While millennials are seen as a generation that’s social media-savvy, they were also the last generation to grow up without the Internet. Nostalgia for the lost world of 1990s consumer culture is most obvious in Belly Kids (2014).
Here, Miceli draws Furbies, Caprisuns and Tweety Bird — images that epitomized the childhood of every American girl born around 1990. The way Miceli draws is childlike and endearing, using markers to outline shapes, with a disregard to shading or three-dimensionality.
Photo courtesy of Off Topic
“When you’re a child, you just want to grow up,” says Miceli. “I only appreciated what I had in retrospect.”
But Miceli is not one to dwell on the past. The artist, who has over 56,000 Instagram followers, says it’s all about how we choose to use social media.
In Computer (2014), Miceli draws the face of a girl with green hair, accompanied by a phrase lamenting how she’s “in a relationship” with her computer. But is that necessarily a bad thing? After all, Miceli gained much recognition and visibility through Tumblr, and she’s done most of her networking with other young, female artists online.
Photo courtesy of Off Topic
Coming of age during the advent of social media, Miceli believes that it’s part of her responsibility and the responsibility of those like her to “decode social media and figure it out.”
It’s the rawness and innocence of her artwork, despite its attempt to put forth a tough facade — a drawing of a black rubber bracelet with the words “bad girl” printed on it doesn’t cut it — that speaks volumes.
“As women, we are raised to be more self-conscious, but with social media, we can control how we want to be perceived,” says Miceli.
HATERS CAN BE CUTE
One artist who owes her success to social media is Taiwanese artist John Yuyi (江宥儀).
“A lot of my artwork starts off as me and my friends just goofing around and having fun,” says the 25-year-old who uses live models for her installations.
Alluding to the unpredictability of the Internet, she adds: “Sometimes, a piece will go viral after I share it.”
In Back Post (2014), John converts herself into a walking Facebook feed. Stickers posted on her naked back indicate the number of Facebook followers the artist has — 2,000. Also slathered on her back are recent posts and “like” buttons.
John has also done similar installations with the Instagram account of a Korean-American model in New York and the Twitter feed of a Brazilian-Japanese model in Tokyo.
Each piece raises important questions, such as: What does a “like” or a “follow” really convey? Certainly, there’s a sense of accomplishment, but the installations also point out the absurdity of it all. Although their bodies are covered with “tweets,” “likes” and “followers,” the models are not entirely defined by their social media feeds.
Rather, it goes to show that social media is a mere tool of interaction, and sometimes, such interactions say more about the audience’s own beliefs than the user who is tweeting or posting a picture.
That being said, John tells me that she doesn’t have a lot of haters.
“Although there was one girl,” she says, “who inboxed me saying, ‘I am not your friend,’ and a few days later, she wrote, ‘I am your daddy.’”
She shrugs it off. “Haters can be cute.”
TOO AMBITIOUS
But sometimes, haters come from within her own circle of friends. For instance, one of her friends recently told her she is “too ambitious.”
“It’s very sad to hear your BFF say, ‘you are too ambitious.’”
John says that ambition is not a good trait to have as a woman in Taiwan. It’s something she attributes to the long-lasting effect of traditional Chinese culture, and in particular, Confucianism, which preaches things like: “A woman without talent is virtuous.”
She adds that she went to college with a lot of talented women who have aesthetically-pleasing Instagram feeds, but don’t seem to be producing a lot of artwork these days.
“It’s just part of the culture, especially for women, to be humble, and not be like, ‘hey, look at me,’ which is different from American culture.”
But John is not a hater. Like Miceli, she plans on creating artwork that’s silly, absurd and fun to look at.
“I’m not going to keep a low profile.”
I tell her we’re going to take a picture now and with that, she whips out compact powder from her purse and dabs her nose.
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