The Butterfly Effect Print

The way we see or interpret images can shape the way we understand other people, ultimately defining how we identify with ourselves. Self-projection into the perfect human forms like dolls and mannequins can induce in us the covetousness of an ideal. This ideal is imagined, familiar and yet could be an uncanny ‘other’. Unrecognizable ideals created in the subconscious of one’s mind, are reflected as a staged ‘curated self’, displaying all documentation as evidence over the web, for that particular event. Through this fictional personification of the ‘self’, performing digitally, I have tried to dissect the web of complex visibility patterns in relation to the ideas of simulation, to generate new dialogue regarding the narration of captured reality through the lens of a camera. Curated ‘self’, therefore becomes another way to live experiences you might not otherwise will, as a shred of ‘false’ evidence. These ‘simulated’ avatars retain themselves as a byproduct of global image rotation, collective cultural aesthetics, and western fashion trends. With myself as a subject under scrutiny, this project aims to highlight, propagate and exaggerate the bizarre eccentricity of daily encounters, from a position of a model/subject/woman but also through the lens of photographer, mirror, female and spectacle. My practice, therefore, interrogates bizarreness and blurred boundaries between reality and illusions, collective memory and desires, genders, and set roles. I am interested in exploring costumes, drama, and the role of acted truth in the construction of how larger meaning is perceived by society. Costumes become a response towards observed/transforming culture but also an extension of the human body as a lab specimen. This specimen can be studied with new research methodologies in response to how the camera can catalog, document, and make it visible. A specimen that only exists/is visible for a larger spectacle.