Jackson Eaton’s series Melfies 2 presents the artist’s body concealed by a surrealist collage of networked selves. Mirror-selfies (shortened to ‘melfies’) are taken, then dissected digitally and reverse-image searched using Google. A host of visually similar material is then overlaid, masking Eaton’s natural or biological self with digital miscues from the image abundance. These fragmented bodies of commodified objects highlight the extent to which our online self is connected to readymade and corporate structures, offering the idea that the artist’s self-image might act as a kind of resistance to the redundancy brought about by increasingly repetitive and automated forms. Exhibited through the image networking platform Instagram, Melfies 2 explores the failure of attempts to control our self-presentations and express our individuality on social media.
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