Lais Pontes in Marsoui
EXHIBIT
BORN NOWHERE
Lais Pontes, London, United Kingdom | laispontes.com
“My artwork is an ongoing research-based process concerned with the construction of identity in the age of social media and its contemporary problematization.”
“My research focuses on issues of identity, online culture, the fluidity of identity in contemporary society, media as an extension of the body and social media as an extension of the self.
“By using my body and life to stage experiments, I explore the social-media phenomenon and its influence on behavior. Through a process of research, observation and experimentation, I investigate the relationship between an individual’s online and offline realities in his/her construction of identity using social-media platforms. I have appropriated a number of social networking websites (including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) to create artworks, and this has enabled the production of collectively constructed works that possess countless possible paths and outcomes. I work with participants who become co-creators as they encounter, interact, interpret, and engage in my art projects. The encounter allows the artwork to take on new forms and extend itself within the spectrum of the original meaning. My art projects invite viewers to develop a critical view of social media and how it affects our lives.”
Lais Pontes
EXHIBIT AT RENCONTRES
BORN NOWHERE
Born Nowhere is a social-media art project that uses Facebook as a platform for crowd-sourcing identities. By photographing a series of self-portraits and modifying them using digital technology, the artist transforms her own facial characteristics into a diverse cast of female personalities. She posts each of the digitally manipulated photographs on Facebook and then invites its users to share their thoughts, comments and interpretations of the characters’ portraits, based solely on the character’s image. This dialogue is a flexible interaction that allowed for an unbounded sociocultural experience. By aggregating comments from Facebook users, the artist constructs a bio for each character and posts this on Facebook, too. In this way, the users’ comments inform and help generate a unique persona for each character – with its own name, psychological characteristics, life history and memory.