Viral Self-Portraits
Online exhibition
15 May – 31 December 2020
Concept: Zdenka Badovinac
Curators selectors:
Afiaty Riksa, Zdenka Badovinac, Ekaterina Degot, Tandazani Dhlakama, Galit Eilat, Charles Esche, iLiana Fokianaki, Boris Groys, Hou Hanru, Vít Havránek, Koyo Kouoh, Pablo Lafuente, Tammy Langtry, Maria Lind, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Bojana Piškur, Tjaša Pogačar, Igor Španjol, Mabel Tapia, Christine Tohme, Abhijan Toto, Jelena Vesić, Raluca Voinea, WHW
We started thinking about the Viral Self-Portraits online exhibition at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when we were still self-isolating at home. We first contacted 23 curators across the globe to invite five artists each to do self-portraits, according to the invitation below. 100 international artists responded.
Rather than literal images of artists’ faces, what we had in mind with self-portraits was all the forces currently (co)shaping our subjectivities. Forces of a reality that is today full of unknowns due to the pandemic: without a way to prognosticate the kind of future that lies ahead we tend to imagine it on a range between two extremes: the possibility of outrageously authoritarian regimes and the prospect of a society of more equitable division of wealth. This is our first time of truly facing the transience of all existence, ourselves included, of facing our own death, which we had been pushing to the back of our minds for so long. Our increasingly fast-paced life has now come to a halt, at least for a while, hopefully long enough to allow for collective reflection.
http://www.mg-lj.si/en/online-exhibitions/2888/viral-portraits/#page/100