In collaboration with Brooks Bell for Philadelphia's Signs of Solidarity, an Inauguration Day public art protest campaign in opposition to hatred and platforms that embolden divisiveness. To learn more about Signs of Solidarity, read the press release from Streets Dept: here.
Comissioned murals for PBR for Seaside Heights, New Jersey. In collaboration with Brooks Bell.
I hardly use it, yet it torments me; and I’m sure if I used it more, the struggle would be all the harder. Such is my relationship with social media.
I was born with a yearning heart, always wanting and longing for something yet never really knowing what it is that I am nostalgic or aching for. It’s from this place in which I find myself curious about what it means to live and love in the swiftness of the digital era, and where this current body of work grows.
By modern standards, I’m hardly an active user - I’ve never had a twitter, my facebook is nearly defunct, I just learned about Snapchat some months ago, and discovering the terrors of Tinder last year left me a stunned doe in the headlights. As of this moment, I’m a latecomer to Instagram, though still mostly too shy for selfies.
It’s undeniably seductive though - this glowing, virtual world. Its existence provides a magical realm in which no one ever need suffer the pangs of loneliness. It’s a place where friendship, sex, and love are never more than a click, a swipe, a post or selfie away. A few “likes” offer semblances of gratification, affirmation that has never been made more attainable.
Yet, between the texts and the emojis, what gets lost or is left unsaid? Where is poetry if there is no longer language for nuance? Is every minute engrossed in a virtual interaction still a personal one, furthermore, a human one? The concept of romance and infidelity keeps expanding in the digital age too - online dating, but also stalking, sexting, nudes, DMs, secret activity on the very same apps that might have introduced two people...where are the boundaries to (un)faithfulness when the internet is, at its virtual core, limitless? Perhaps more importantly, if life is about growing and finding ourselves, where does that leave us if we develop two fragmented selves - one crafted, the other unfiltered? And was there ever a time where we have felt more together yet even more alone?
