Social media has completely changed our lives, whether we are fully aware of it or not. It has opened new channels of communication and has made the sharing of content easy for all on a global scale. For artists, it has changed everything. They no longer need galleries to showcase their work, and they have all the new tools of the digital age to be autonomous from patrons as well. With the recent advent of Instagram, social media content has become increasingly visual, and this platform has become a new playground for creative minds.
One of them is Signe Pierce, who calls herself a ‘reality artist’. Her work involves mainly performance and photography, as she delves into questions of gender, sexuality, and identity in the digital age. Using her doll-like physique to embody a social media fantasy, she provides a mirror to the online society by colliding art and reality.
In the film American Reflexxx, she performs a sexualized woman with a mask made out of mirrors. As she ascends a busy street in Myrtle Beach, her faceless, open sexuality attracts some malevolent curiosity. The faces around her are either predatory, judgemental, or glaring with hate. Quickly, things degenerate and she is subjected to insults, groping and assault. When she falls to the ground, we can feel her helplessness in front of this crowd.
The comment she made there was very powerful. She uncovered a violent misogyny still pervasive in American society, and provided evidence that even though mass media constantly sexualized women, in reality women are not allowed to be in charge of their own sexuality. There is also an interesting comment to be made on the way social media and sharing in mass has the capacity to expose unfair behavior to the world.
This performance also touches on the fascinating subject of the division between art and reality. Art, in many ways, has been a way to materialize fantasy, to get it closer to our reality. But here, do we not realize that we find it difficult to draw the line between fantasy and reality? What Pierce is demonstrating here is how fantasy and the real world are not compatible, and how violent their friction can be.
Finally, there is the major theme of performance, and how our presence on social media and even in our social interactions can come down to interpreting different roles. Here, Pierce was performing the sexually desirable woman, which was rejected from the public sphere. The mirror masking her face reflected the faces of the people judging and assaulting her. In general, it seems like Signe Pierce is holding a mirror up to us all.
Learn more about Signe Pierce here:
http://www.annkakultys.com/artists/signe-pierce/
Watch the performance here:
And follow her Instagram!
Digital Arts 