Event overview
An Art exhibition about how Social Media affect our bodies and lifestyle: sexuality, exercising, beauty regimes, dieting, etc.
Social Media has led to radical shifts in the ways we communicate, consume and create. They play an outsized role and greatly affect the stereotypes of what is considered a desirable and ideal body. On a daily basis, we witness new forms of 'collective intelligence' which is mediated through online platforms and has a great effect on us since it is very broadly shared and accessible to everyone. We get deeply influenced by the online trends, and follow them in order to feel that we belong.
The ‘Wellness’ culture projected on us via social media often contains images that indicate that there is only one kind of body that should be valued, fuelling an obsession with one's image. People are imagined to be ‘flawless’ which in this context means horny, super skinny, armed with recession-proof college degrees, and always on time for their service jobs, courtesy of their replica watches. (Hito Steyerl, ‘The Spam of the Earth’, 2012) We often get confused, trying to define the difference between a ‘healthy lifestyle’ and ‘image obsession’.
Despite the gender equality activism that has been going on the last decades, this limited view of the ‘ideal body image’ still reigns, and is extended to social constraints on gender roles and stereotypes. As a result of traditional gender role socialization processes, the most repressed and thus vulnerable members of society learn to self-objectify.) Even if young women’s bodies are more vulnerable, males also undergo a great pressure to adjust to what is believed to be the Alpha male: strong built, muscular, straight, professionally successful, white, able to offer a luxurious lifestyle to any potential future wives. ‘The Young-Girl is not always young; more and more frequently, she is not even female. She is the figure of total integration in a disintegrating social totality.’ (Tiqqun, Theory of the Young-Girl, 1999
Living in a world full of anxiety about our age, stressed if we are pretty enough, fit enough, young enough, white enough, sexy enough. Having control over our image and bodies we are falsely convinced with an illusion of control over our lives.
Artists: Laragh Conroy, Kate Howard, Eleni Odysseos, Marios Pavlou
Curated by Mirena Liakousi
PV: 6-9 with opening night performance by Laragh Conroy at 7pm.
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
---|---|---|
21 Sep 2018 |
6:00pm - 9:00pm Performance at 19.00 by Laragh Conroy |
Accessibility
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