digital_self is an attempt to understand the many ways we choose to represent ourselves in digital media. The exhibition primarily concerns itself with issues of originality, identity and self-indulgence that all too often occur online and seemingly dominate social media. The pieces largely emphasise the conflict between how we choose to represent ourselves online versus how we conduct ourselves privately. Viewer interaction is encouraged by several performance-based visual pieces that reflect the culture of online identity and self-promotion. One of the more successful interpretations of this concept is Amalia Ulman’s ‘Privilege’, a short satirical performance piece that utilises platforms such as Instagram to explore  the fabricated digital identity of an office worker preoccupied with her narcissistic attempt to garner online status. In contrast, Theresa Nanigian’s ‘Not Sorry’ offers an image of the bedroom of a young adult, a far more private and intimate insight into an individual’s identity and how it conflicts with their online persona.

 

Jonathan Mayhew’s ‘Different Thoughts Various Evenings’, a large-scale projection that dominates the exhibition space, displays a collection of thoughts and observations shared online and highlights how by utilising social media practically anyone can avail of a public platform for their opinions. However positive the provision of this platform is, some of the more puzzling statements presented in Mayhew’s piece lead to the conclusion that some people are perhaps best to keep their thoughts to themselves. Individually, many of the pieces in the exhibition succeed in conveying the rapidly diversifying representations of the self in the online world. Unfortunately, the organisation of the exhibition overall is rather clumsy. Despite their correlation in subject matter, there is a certain disconnect between the individual pieces which leads to rather uneasy movement through the exhibition space. This small exhibition offers one or two intriguing observations into the question of the digital personality, but they are largely self-contained statements and offer little further insight into a subject that has already been extensively addressed. Despite some strong individual pieces, sadly many aspects of digital_self are as self-indulgent as the online culture they portray.

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