Queen of the Day
If only we lived in Andy Warhol’s world, where everyone could be famous for 15 minutes. After enjoying our minutes of fame we could move on with the rest of our lives. In a world of fleeting moments, we could muse about what might have been before returning to the reality that life is too short to be fulfilled and too long to be remembered in every detail.
Sadly, that is not the world we live in. Our new digitally afflicted lives are laden with photos and self-declared moments of fame and (mis)fortune, all well-documented on Facebook, Instagram and twitter. We no longer have the luxury of forgetting, or moving on as the moments of our lives are incessantly regurgitated by anonymous algorithms perpetually reminding us and our friends of yesterday’s reality.
Luckily there is art as a welcome distraction – a different way of looking at ourselves and the world than through the lens of the iPhone selfie. Artists like Pola Dwurnik, who takes us on a journey of her imagined world as the Queen of Painting, are the antidote to yesteryear. By taking her typical “self-ironic vision of future” to Instagram, Pola re-interprets the selfie as more than just a memory of the past. She gives us license to reinterpret or reimagine our own reality.
Birthdays come and go, but our news feeds never seem to disappear and birthday wishes are just a click away. As we think about how to answer them (in 140 characters or less) we should learn from Pola’s example and imagine our live not as a series of selfies, but as an endless array or possibilities waiting to happen. Happy Birthday, Pola and Happy New Year to all.
Project Art Lounge 