Projects

 

(Life)Like

 

Alvira and Alouette are twin sisters that have studied art through UNISA (University of South Africa). Imaginarium: the Studio is their working studio and gallery situated in Port St. Francis, St Francis Bay in the Eastern Cape, South Africa.  At the studio they showcase their art, work on their upcoming exhibitions, do commissions, and give art classes. 

 

Currently they Alvira and Alouette are working on a concept called Life(Like).  This body of work explores the oscillating relationship between the real (physical) world and virtual reality, focusing specifically on the social media platform of Instagram. Their aim with this body of work is to paint contemporary images that have not been captured in the medium of paint before. To this end, they focus their attention on internet meme versions of age old genres. The portrait or self-portrait has been replaced by selfies and groupies. Planking is another example of this. It can be considered as a new way people move and hold themselves, unlikely to be found in portraits by the old masters. Still lives have been replaced by food porn, cat photos and “what’s in my bag” photos. The objects in these new still lives are arranged in ways that have largely not been used in paintings before: the objects are often captured from an aerial viewpoint and include contemporary objects like cell phones and sunglasses.

The longevity of digital social media images are questionable. While we are aware that what we post on social media is very hard (if not impossible) to retract, the relevance of images posted more than a week or two ago are negligible, being replaced by a myriad of new and similar images. Once a person has posted an image of themselves with their cat or the food they ate at a restaurant and the likes and shares have died down, it is highly unlikely that they or their follower or friends will revisit the image to reminisce after more than two weeks. Of course there are exceptions to this, for instance if the image is of a life changing event or has been reposted as a #tbt (through back Thursday), but your run of the mill selfie will be replaced by a new updated version next week. Thus one of the intentions of (Life)Like is to extend the visibility of these images and preserve them through painting for future generations to enjoy, since paintings have survived eons of time and provide us with valuable glimpses of the past.

The artworks for this project are made up of a series of actions that start off in the real world, an Instagrammer takes a photo of a physical object, person, or scene, and posts the image on Instagram, thereby making the real, virtual. Some of these images are often carefully curated to present the “perfect life”, a utopia, while there is also a growing trend to post intentionally unattractive images. Alvira and Alouette go through their Instagram feeds or search specific hashtags and “like” certain images. They then make these images real again by painting them. They then push them back into the virtual world by “reposting” these images (often a few times during the painting process) and “tagging” the original image maker. That person then often “likes” their posts, comments on it and may even repost it back to their account. By adding certain hashtags to their reposted images Alvira and Alouette also get likes and comments from “likeminded” people. Thus, the process has come full circle and the artwork does not just consist of the painting but of the interaction between the two worlds and the likes, comments, and “regrams” the image gets.