ME, MYSELFIE & I
There was this email in my inbox from the Saatchi Gallery inviting me to the preview of their“ From Selfie to Self-Expression” exhibition. Great, I thought! I didn’ t need to think twice if I go or not. Name put on the list right away! I even submitted a selfie of myself for their selfie contest, yes, no regrets! I saw some beautiful, some creative but also some super boring selfies submitted by people from all over Europe.
By the way, do you remember when you took your first selfie? I think I took mine back in the early 2000’ s. Why taking a picture of myself and not asking someone else? I remember I wanted to keep it a bit intimate, I wanted to decide how I look in my picture, I wanted to do it for myself and enjoy the
9 outcome by myself first. I didn’ t feel the need to share it with anyone else. This obsession for sharing our selfies and the addiction for likes started only with using Facebook and other social media platforms and I was, of course, also“ infected” by it. However, what I sometimes did was taking a picture of mine to transform it into something arty. Like Andy Warhol did. I used filters from my photo editor programs, copied and coloured my pictures and much more. I enjoyed the process, the experience of creating something unexpected with my own picture. It was fun!
Back to this email from the Saatchi Gallery, when saving the preview event to my calendar I thought“ FI- NALLY”!! It was time to do such an exhibition. How can we ignore the art of selfies when even Kim Kardashian published a whole book with only her selfies? For several years, we’ ve been living in a time of increased selfie creation and recreation. The definition of a selfie says that they are digitally evolved forms of self-portraits. I’ m still not sure if they really are self-portraits. Are they? What do you think?
Well, remember selfies in the sense of self-portraits are nothing new at all. The Saatchi Gallery’ s exhibition made that very clear and draw the line between the old masters( like Frida Kahlo and Van Gogh who painted self-portraits already so many decades ago) and our smartphone generation today. What is the difference between Warhol’ s or Rembrandt’ s self-portraiture and our selfies? That de-