Colleen A.J. Smith

Unicorn Skins hybridized drawing, performance and installation to explore parallels of autonomy and conformity between representing the Self, its ‘pseudo-identities’ as portrayed on social media and the artist representing their Self through work in an commercial gallery space. The artist drew on the walls of the gallery, putting herself under the time restraints of a ‘24 hour Instagram story window"‘ to create a ‘gallery-sized’ visual narrative of gestural portraits lining the walls of the gallery space.

The gallery space became ensconced with a continuous stream of gestural ‘selfie’ portraits, found on Instagram under the tag of ‘#unicorn.’  The selected portraits were individuals of various races, ages and genders.  By covering these rudimentary images in a gestural wash of pink, the concept of applying the ‘filter’ became present- immersive and distorting.  The figures themselves in their gestural fluidity remained abstracted. They existed within, without and around one another to reflect the realms of conformity enforced by the platform’s media algorythms.