Last accessed: 8th June 2017.<\/p>\n
By Alastair Sooke<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n “Amalia Ulman\u2019s spoof selfies tricked thousands \u2013 and made her the toast of the art world. She talks to Alastair Sooke<\/p>\n I<\/span>n April 2014, a young Argentinian-born artist called Amalia Ulman uploaded an image on her Instagram feed. It consisted of the phrase \u201cPart I\u201d, in black letters against white, accompanied by an enigmatic caption that read \u201cExcellences & Perfections\u201d.<\/p>\n Although 28 of Ulman\u2019s followers quickly \u201cliked\u201d the post, few of them realised that it signalled the beginning of one of the most original and outstanding artworks of the digital era.<\/p>\n Before long Ulman was uploading a series of images \u2013 mostly preening selfies taken on her iPhone \u2013 that seemed to document her attempt to make it as an \u201cIt girl\u201d in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n In some of them she posed in lingerie on rumpled bed sheets in boutique hotel rooms. In others she offered cutesy close-ups of kittens, rose petals, and strawberries and pancakes captioned \u201cbrunch\u201d.<\/p>\n So far, so banal: Ulman, who studied fine art at Central Saint Martins in London from 2008 to 2011, had apparently succumbed to the narcissism of social media.<\/p>\n She was mindlessly bragging about her supposedly enviable lifestyle in LA, as she attended pole-dancing classes and underwent breast-enlargement surgery.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople started hating me,\u201d Ulman, 26, told me recently, speaking via Skype from her studio in downtown LA. \u201cSome gallery I was showing with freaked out and was like, \u2018You have to stop doing this, because people don\u2019t take you seriously anymore.\u2019 Suddenly I was this dumb b—- because I was showing my ass in pictures.\u201d<\/p>\n A<\/span>\u00a0promising young artist \u2013 selected a year earlier by talent-spotting curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist, co-director of the Serpentine Galleries, as one of the leading lights of the YouTube generation \u2013 was swiftly wrecking her career.<\/p>\n Except that, unbeknown to the tens of thousands of people who started following her, she wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Almost five months later, Ulman posted a black-and-white image of a rose, which she captioned \u201cThe End\u201d. Soon afterwards she announced that she had been staging an elaborate performance called Excellences & Perfections via her Instagram and Facebook accounts.<\/p>\n All those \u201cdumb\u201d pictures of Ulman, half-naked, staring vapidly into the lens of her smartphone camera? They were a joke. The shot of her bandaged breasts, after her operation to have them enlarged? It was faked.<\/p>\n Ulman, it turned out, had been playing a role \u2013 or, indeed, several roles. And almost all of the 89,244 followers she had amassed by the end of the performance had been fooled.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything was scripted,\u201d explains Ulman, who grew up in Asturias in north-west Spain. \u201cI spent a month researching the whole thing. There was a beginning, a climax and an end. I dyed my hair. I changed my wardrobe. I was acting: it wasn\u2019t me.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, a year and a half on, several of the 175 photographs that Ulman created for Excellences & Perfections will be shown in two new exhibitions: Electronic Superhighway, at the Whitechapel Gallery in east London, which will trace the impact of computerised technology on artists from the Sixties to today; and Tate Modern\u2019s Performing for the Camera, which will examine the relationship between artistic performance and photography.<\/p>\n Ulman first had the idea for Excellences & Perfections while she was at college, but she \u201cnever had the budget to do it properly, because I was on the dole when I was living in London, which is a very elitist place\u201d.<\/p>\n T<\/span>owards the end of her time in the city, she tells me, she earned money as a \u201csugar baby\u201d \u2013 an escort. \u201cI\u2019d rather not talk about it,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s too dark. It was out of necessity: I wasn\u2019t playing around. But being an escort is how most of my female peers are paying for their student fees. It\u2019s very common during these s—– times of recession.\u201d<\/p>\n The experiences of her escort friends, she says, informed the narrative of Excellences & Perfections, which Ulman finessed while recovering in hospital after her legs were \u201cdestroyed\u201d in a coach crash in 2013. \u201cI still can\u2019t run, and suffer from chronic pain,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Planning her comeback on Instagram, she decided to divide her performance into three distinct \u201cepisodes\u201d, inspired by stereotypes of how young women present themselves online.<\/p>\n T<\/span>o begin with, in the finished piece, Ulman plays the part of an artsy, provincial girl who has moved to Los Angeles for the first time. This fictional version of herself breaks up with her boyfriend and becomes a \u201csugar baby\u201d to make ends meet.<\/p>\n This marks the start of the second episode, which offers a pastiche of the \u201cghetto aesthetic\u201d popularised by American celebrities such as Kim Kardashian. At this point, Ulman says, her anti-heroine self \u201cstarts acting crazy and posting bad photos online\u201d. She \u201cgets a boob job, takes drugs, has a breakdown, and goes to rehab\u201d.<\/p>\n This initiates the denouement of Ulman\u2019s social-media satire, as she devotes herself to \u201crecovery\u201d, and uploads pictures inspired by Gwyneth Paltrow\u2019s blog Goop: \u201cKind of girl next door,\u201d Ulman explains. \u201cI liked yoga and juices. That was the end.\u201d<\/p>\n When I first heard about Excellences & Perfections, I assumed that it was a spoof lampooning the self-regarding way we all behave on social media. It seemed like a modern-day, digital version of Hogarth\u2019s Rake\u2019s Progress: a sharp diatribe against vacuity.<\/p>\n Not so, says Ulman, who had something more specific in her sights. \u201cIt\u2019s more than a satire,\u201d she explains. \u201cI wanted to prove that femininity is a construction, and not something biological or inherent to any woman. Women understood the performance much faster than men. They were like, \u2018We get it \u2013 and it\u2019s very funny.\u2019\u2009\u201d What was the joke? \u201cThe joke was admitting how much work goes into being a woman and how being a woman is not a natural thing. It\u2019s something you learn.\u201d<\/p>\n I<\/span>n this respect, Ulman was following in the footsteps of important older artists who have explored the fluid nature of female identity, from the 20th-century French photographer Claude Cahun to the American Cindy Sherman.<\/p>\n Yet, from the beginning, Ulman knew that she should stage her performance online. She wanted to play with the conventions of Instagram, such as labelling images with hashtags.<\/p>\n This was her masterstroke: the fact that Excellences & Perfections exists in the very form that it simultaneously deconstructs is a sleek, sophisticated, intelligent move.<\/p>\n It also explains why the performance created such a buzz. As a result of Excellences & Perfections, Ulman is now feted as one of the sensations of contemporary art.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea was to experiment with fiction online using the language of the internet,\u201d she explains, \u201crather than trying to adapt old media to the internet, as has been done with mini-series on YouTube. The cadence and rhythm were totally different.\u201d<\/p>\n I<\/span>s this why the work was so successful? \u201cYes,\u201d she says, before laughing. \u201cBut I also know that photos of half-naked girls get a lot of \u2018likes\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Ulman’s Exhibitions:<\/span><\/p>\n Performing for the Camera is at Tate Modern, London SE1<\/p>\n This is working towards objective:<\/span><\/p>\n 1.\u00a0To understand the ways in which Social Media and Magazines can affect self-perceptions and issues:<\/p>\n A) With body image (Females, 18-24)<\/p>\n 3. To work with and interview those both actively working in the Fashion and Beauty Industries, and those on a consumer\/follower\/user basis, to compare behaviours and perspectives in relation to body image and self-perceptions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With my FMP work taking the\u00a0format of a fashion and beauty magazine, I have often been seeking feedback in order to critique\/deconstruct\/question \u2013 and also have been doing this myself throughout the course of the writing, designing and editing process. 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