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 — Selfies are part of our voluntary self-exposure in an attempt to take back the images of ourselves, but in the process we also give ourselves away. In the world of online selfies, faces are the focus; bodies tend to appear as afterthoughts. We see a collection of eyes, lips, mouths, noses,
Opinion
CHICAGO — I cry, you cry, we fuck each others' feelings, we broke up, we got back together, and somehow it all ended up on Tumblr. What is crass and private is public and affective, considered just another aspect of affect, of gaining likes, retweets and reblogs through sharable, likable emotions.
Art
CHICAGO — To steal, to remake, to remix, and to appropriate are all part of being a creative human being. We are inspired and influenced by the works of art we encounter. Imitation is arguably the best form of flattery, and thanks to the internet we can obtain images a whole lot easier. Copyrights b
Opinion
CHICAGO — Explosives blow up skies the world over. From our smartphone-enhanced filter bubbles, we learn to consume these explosive images on social sites like Instagram, where the Insta-aesthetics of war know no global boundaries. Instagram offers a space for mediating the chemical explosions, corp
Art
CHICAGO — A giant replica of the classic yellow rubber duckie drifted into Hong Kong's harbor last month. Sailing across the water, bobbing about as if in a giant, public bathtub, the Pop art-inspired duck, created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman in 2007, is essentially an enlarged version of the
Art
CHICAGO — The selfie is a mirror, an illusion of a mirror, an egotistical moment wrapped in time, and an embarrassing moment post-shave. But there is something curious about seeing your doppelgänger reflected back at you rather than running into him or her on the street.
Art
KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Kaitlin O'Brien is 16, and she's gonna turn 17 in August. Arguably her biggest accomplishment this year to date was curating Thanks for the Warning (ran through June 22), a 68-person show containing 86 artworks at the Dolphin Gallery, which her father John O'Brien has owned f
Art
CHICAGO — There is a set of culturally acceptable ways for mothers to be and behave in the world. Mothers aren't allowed to have their own lives or be sexual; in essence, they're not allowed to be human beings. When an artist who's also a mother crosses these lines, people often react in ways that a
Interview
CHICAGO — Born from the girl brains of Chicago artists Eileen Mueller and Jamie Steele of the curatorial project GURLDONTBEDUMB (GDBD), the exhibition Weird Dude Energy (WDE) takes its inspiration from the blog of the same name, which was started in 2008 by Christine Boepple and Kerry McLaughlin.
Art
CHICAGO — A few weeks ago, I thought that I'd had it with selfies It began with a simple Facebook post declaring: "Just say NO to SELFIES <3 <3 <3." Less than a week later, I found myself doing exactly what I feared: Alone in a dressing room at Target, I was snapping selfies with my iPhone, selectin
Art
CHICAGO — A few weeks ago, I thought that I'd had it with selfies It began with a simple Facebook post declaring: "Just say NO to SELFIES <3 <3 <3." Less than a week later, I found myself doing exactly what I feared: Alone in a dressing room at Target, I was snapping selfies with my iPhone, selectin
Opinion
CHICAGO — Your Facebook life won't last forever, and you know it — that's the gist of Geoffrey Lillemon and Stööki's project "Like to Death."