Profile Picture
This series is a group of portraits based on social media posts from my Chicago art world. For each piece I found a photo on social media and then reached out to each person in the picture for confirmation that I could make a painting based on it. The portraits are from a network of artists that extend between the South Loop and Bridgeport neighborhoods of Chicago’s Southside. The Chicago art world is often known for a variety of styles coexisting alongside each other with influences of figurative art, outsider art, and more. The artists in this series, like the rest of Chicago, have a variety of styles and subjects but have a common ethos driven by kindness, inventiveness, and mutual support of one another’s careers. The shared experience across different backgrounds, styles, and ages makes any opening fun and weird and surprising all at once.
Over the top of each painting is a layer of code from the html of the webpage as seen on the social media website. The layer of text gives the image context as to where it is typically viewed, but also uncovers some of the effort behind rendering each image on a screen. The way we view images in a feed often makes them feel fleeting and disposable, making it easy to forget that they are a file on a server displayed on our screens through a series of written instructions.
