Who is She?
Who is She? is a series of drawings and digital works function through a generative process of transference between physical and digital augmentation of images. These works address hysterical representations of femme expression and emotion within art history and contemporary culture. I begin by taking images of women in heightened emotional states from art history or popular culture. I crop, enhance, and manipulate the most dramatic aspect of these women’s expressions using the liquify tool in photoshop. This tool is often commercially used to make women look skinnier or to make their eyes and breasts bigger. I then physically manipulate the digital image by translating it through drawing. I scan the drawing and repeat the process. I also add an additional layer of digital intervention by creating GIFs, manipulating images of each drawing through a variety of phone-based image and video applications. These GIFs add to this generative series; animating and imbuing otherwise static drawings with an emotive quality. Each manipulation of the image, digital or physical, generates a new piece. Through this process, I have compiled a body of work in this series that I have stretched and pulled to achieve its most emotionally heightened state with ambiguous expressions that the viewer can fill with their own trauma. The series is intended to show how the performance of self and emotive gestures connected to hysteria are collectively developed over time through representations of femme-identifying figures within visual culture.