Summer Residency:

Dawn Woolley

16th July - 22nd July 2024

Front Gallery Residency from Dawn Woolley. 

“My artistic practice encompasses performance, photography, video, and installation, often blurring the boundary between self-portraiture and still-life. I examine my experiences as a subject in neoliberal consumer culture through a queer, feminist and anti-capitalist lens. It is a form of activism and a feminist critique of representations of gender in commercial and popular culture.

Currently I am researching methods to critique and challenge idealised heteronormative gender expectations in selfies and portraiture. Selfies are an important contemporary mode of self-presentation, however, they are often restrained in relation to binary gender beauty ideals. Research shows that bodies that do not reflect these norms, such as those marginalised in terms of race, gender, sexuality, size and disability, are subject to greater discipline and hostility online. Therefore, it is important to find ways to participate in selfie cultures while minimising exposure to negative comments and experiences. I have been experimenting with different installation designs and will use them during the residency as the building material for a performance space.

I plan to develop a collaborative performance that queers gender performance in selfies and portraiture working with a queer contemporary dancer. The performance will take place in a participatory installation that will enable also visitors to create queer selfies. The installation and performance will play with notions of surveillance, visibility, and invisibility through aesthetics of abstraction, glitch, and camouflage. The project is inspired (in a wholly negative way) by an advert for L’Oreal Infallible Sculpt makeup featuring Barbara Palvin who says ‘I may not be infallible, but I’m always selfie ready’. Palvin is wearing a belt of selfie-sticks with camera phones and a male voice-over tells the viewer that they can be selfie-ready from any angle for up to twenty-four hours. The camera phone belt visually demonstrates that the pervasiveness of mobile devices with cameras means that people can be photographed at any time, hence the need to be selfie-ready. Social networking sites can be viewed as a giant panopticon in which each user is disciplined by the looks of others.

The installation and performance will present opportunities for visitors to play with identity and negotiate how visible they are in their selfies. The project aims to find new creative approaches that queer self-portraiture in order to enable selfie taking and sharing practices to be practices of care and community building.”

- Taken from Dawn’s Residency Proposal