[ARTIST REVIEW] AMALIA ULMAN
Amalia Ulman is an Argentine artist born in 1989. She grew up in Spain and, throughout her early life, had a strong influence from both her mother and father. Her father was a tattoo artist, and she developed an interest in body modifications. Growing up in an environment that encouraged curiosity, she described herself as an anarchist and a utopian. In her practice, she works with performance, installation, video art, and net art. Her works explore the themes of class imitation and the relationship between consumerism and identity. Through her experimental practice, she involved the use of social media in the creation of her works.
One of these works is titled "Excellences & Perfection," which was produced through the curation and publishing of posts through Instagram. The artist spent months documenting a hoax and fake life of this character—herself—going through the life of a future it-girl, which got thousands of people (followers) invested in her made-up day-to-day life. After this work, she was defined as a social media artist, and her performance widely impacted the perception of the internet today. It also predicted and shone a light on the behavior of the keyboard warriors who visited her page and published both praises and hate. She turned herself into a consumable character and published a curated life. Through different states, she explored the performative side of gender and the stereotyping of women. This work is predictive; it gave us a look into the future and the formula for gaining followers through a very selective representation of reality. She demonstrated that nowadays, a large social media following means power, and this was shown through the impact her work had—something that would not have been possible had she not gathered tens of thousands of followers, which comprised a vital part of the success and accuracy in predicting the future of social media. The use of the rising social media platform Instagram and her several conversations involving its founders after the work was completed, shows the fact that this platform was such an integral element for the creation of this work, through the culture it promotes, even if it was not created with such purposes.
This work was created in 2014, and looking back at it, knowing what we now know about the countless "influencers" and the curation of online content, she was incredibly ahead of the curve and extremely accurate in the way we now see and use social media profiles. Through a series of fake scenarios, which drove her to even fake a plastic surgery procedure, Ulman shows us the ultimate critique of gendered expectations and their proliferation through mass media. She made several powerful points, but the main one was the deceptiveness of social media profiles and the lack of context and reality. Her work was an omen of current times and an accurate premonition of how twisted social media culture is.
Sources:
https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/39375/1/amalia-ulman-2014-instagram-hoax-predicted-the-way-we-use-social-mediaLinks to an external site.
https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/23700/1/amalia-ulman-meme-come-trueLinks to an external site.
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/amalia-ulman-instagram-excellences-perfections/index.htmlLinks to an external site.
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/excellences-perfections-preserving-social-media-with-webrecorder-rhizome/owVRTPJVh-JgJw?hl=enLinks to an external site.
