STEPHANIE NEVILLE


Life Like



2016 - 2018



Concept



The three-part installation entitled Like Life (2016- 2018) is foundational to my Master of Visual Arts research project, The selfie as doppelgänger in autoethnographic Performance art (2018). The work interrogates identity and belonging via a multitude of selfies in the transient, virtual world of cyberspace. I obsessively take and share selfies, exploring my own identity through virtual doppelgängers on Instagram. 1. This process is an attempt to find personal validation and a sense of belonging. 2. Using social media, I focus on how I can stay connected with people during periods of separation.


Catalogue

Like



Like comprises two elements: a large scale suspended installation of selfies printed on transparencies and assembled with crocheted clear gut, and three wall-projected still selfies. The title references the online process of clicking to ‘like’ an image. The literary synonyms ‘resemblance’, ‘being reminiscent of’, and ‘similar to’ are aligned with the notion of doppelgängers and multiple personalities as interrogated through the underlying concept of the work.



Life



The second artwork entitled Life concerns a play on the disembodiment of the doubles. A photograph is expected to represent the essence of an identity, the ‘truth’. In the case of the selfie, however, the image is disassociated from the corporeal whereby the individual may feel s/he is a “subject becoming an object”. This doppelgänger presents as a second self, or an alter-ego. In Life, the double exists in a static form, transferred to the food images that I associate with essential life. The focus is on my Instagram doppelgänger under the social media handle @littlebitfit8. I emphasise this persona because she generates considerable interaction and has been most influential in terms of concretising my identity during my autoethnographic exploration.





Po Box 62298
dubai, uae



stephanieneville.com