These days, there’s a constant influx of data and information being hurtled towards us at lightening speed. We’re currently immersed in the grand age of fake news, alternative facts and the fabrication of images, and it seems like anyone can do anything online using a tad of ingenuity and a dash of technology, with nothing being quite as it seems at first sight.
In our seemingly counterfeit online reality, there’s a need for someone to shine a light on the inconsistencies and discrepancies of our image-obsessed age. And that person might just be Silin Liu: a conceptual artist whose dedicated questioning of the validity of the photographic process (with a little help from her iPhone, a plethora of costumes, some good lighting and a stupendous knack at photoshop) is nothing short of genius.
(c) Silin Liu | Migrant Bird Space
Liu’s upcoming exhibition at Migrant Bird Space in Berlin is the Chinese artist’s very first solo show in Germany, boasting a selection of her most renowned artworks, including a large-scale installation of her video project, SIRENS. However, it’s her award-winning photo series I’M EVERYWHERE that’s got everybody talking. Adopting artistic alter-ego, Céline Liu, for the purpose, the artist seemingly ventures back in time, partying with Princess Diana, hanging out with Einstein and doing the odd bit of light drawing with Picasso.
Through every image and every photographic manipulation, Liu re-selects her chosen path and the character that her alter-ego embodies. It’s this extremely malleable and fluid approach to the notion of identity and its limits that makes Liu’s work so intriguing — they are simultaneously extremely familiar, yet fundamentally different. I’M EVERYWHERE eschews the boundaries imposed by space and time, and produces within the viewer an overwhelming sense of the multiplicity of destinies that we all have the potential to obtain through modern-day technologies.
By manually re-writing history in her own image, Liu also asks the beholder to carefully examine the content of the images before them, and to question our inexorable inclination to worship at the feet of superfluous icons and celebrities. We’re invited to consider the consequences of our hyper-connected, online world through Liu’s practice, but gently so — with a hefty dose of fun and historical nostalgia thrown in for good measure.
(c) Silin Liu | Migrant Bird Space
(c) Silin Liu | Migrant Bird Space
(c) Silin Liu | Migrant Bird Space
(c) Silin Liu | Migrant Bird Space
(c) Silin Liu | Migrant Bird Space
(c) Silin Liu | Migrant Bird Space
(c) Silin Liu | Migrant Bird Space
I’M EVERYWHERE opens today at Migrant Bird Space and runs until October 30th.