Alicia Eler is a cultural critic and arts reporter at the Minneapolis Star Tribune and author of "The Selfie Generation: How Our Self-Images Are Changing Our Notions of Privacy, Sex, Consent, and Culture" (2017).
Art
CHICAGO — Last month in Halmstad, Sweden, two teenage girls took a selfie together in a bathroom while wearing balaclavas and holding a knife. They would go on to rob a fast-food restaurant making off with a mere $400 before getting arrested. The cops found that selfie on one of their smartphones. H
Interview
CHICAGO — The walls were painted pink-and-yellow zigzags, and a cast of characters outfitted in white tuxes and animal heads ignited an abandoned nightclub, turning the space into a carnivalesque, Dada-influenced funhouse without mirrors. This is just one moment from Ben Coleman and Henry Detweiler'
Art
CHICAGO — Amanda Ross-Ho's giant gray mannequin head is a neosurrealist’s dream come true. Resting comfortably in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, it looks as if caught in preparation for use in a Man Ray photogram. Ross-Ho's site-specific installation THE CHARACTER AND SHAPE OF ILLU
Art
CHICAGO — "You have your father's eyes," people like to tell me when they meet me and my dad at the same time. Inherited biological traits are commonplace, of course — we are the product of two people mating. French-Canadian photographer Ulric Collette's photo series Genetic Portraits presents viewe
Art
CHICAGO — Last week we looked at a few self-portraits by famous artists, classifying these as predecessors to the selfie. Now that anyone can take a photo of themselves and upload it to social media for an insta-audience, the notion of what's an arty smartphone self-portrait and what's "art" is up f
Art
"In the name of 'progress,' our official culture is striving to force the new media to do the work of the old," writes Marshall McLuhan in his zine/manifesto The Medium Is the Massage.
Opinion
CHICAGO — The exploitative fashion shoot OFFICIAL GLAM GIRL for DIS Magazine is yet another disappointing instance of black womens' bodies as objects of an unsmiling capitalism, an order ruled smirkingly by a white woman performing a blinged out, pimp-like gender.
Art
CHICAGO — Much like the city of Detroit’s epic economic saga, this story took me on a wild goose chase. I'm an art journalist reporting on Detroit from Chicago — or, if you would prefer, the Motor City from the Windy City — and that seems odd. The media craze around Detroit just won’t quit, and Chic
Art
CHICAGO — Gender is a fun game to play — if you know the rules and are willing to break them accordingly. As I was working on a story about a queer art show here in Chicago, I found myself thinking about the show as a space for cruising, as if in a bathhouse. Conveniently, much of the art in this sh
Interview
CHICAGO — Ohio. It's not all cornfields, protesters, and lost highways. From Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's song "O-H-I-O" about the 1970 shooting of Kent State students to fascinating and devastating cities like Elyria, a once-thriving steel town, Ohio is an example of American economic and cultu
Art
The selfie is a smartphone-produced version of the self-portrait, which has been a staple of art and photography history since artists first began seeing examining their own images in the mirror.
Art
CHICAGO — Kirk Crippens's photographic series Portraitlandia is a visual manifestation of that surreal moment when quotidian life, a hit television show, and a curious photographer converge.