LOS ANGELES — Whether you like your selfies singular and meditative or coupled and cozy, there’s always an opportunity to see yourselfie anew.
Alicia Eler
Alicia Eler is a cultural critic and arts reporter. She is the author of the book The Selfie Generation (Skyhorse Publishing), which has been reviewed in the New York Times, WIRED Magazine and the Chicago Tribune. A native of Chicago by way of L.A., Alicia's writing has also been published in Glamour, the Guardian, CNN, Hyperallergic, Art21 Magazine, LA Weekly, and Aperture. She is currently the visual art critic/arts reporter at the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Over 200 Years of Portraiture in One Exhibition
Striking Resemblance: The Changing Art of Portraiture at Rutger University’s Zimmerli Art Museum considers some 200 years (c. 1800 to the present) of the portrait’s history in mediums two-, three- and four-dimensional, with 130 works by approximately 80 artists.
Selfie Reflections
CHICAGO — There are selfies for every occasion, outfit, haircut, new pair of glasses, and reflective work of art, and then there are accidental selfies in Craigslist mirrors.
Waiting for Faith Wilding on the Internet
CHICAGO — It was the second wave of feminism. I wasn’t alive yet, but I like to daydream about what it would have been like to attend those women’s consciousness-raising meetings, female-centric spiritual get-togethers, heated strategic battles over how to win reproductive rights, and the space to explore one’s own sexuality without attaching labels.
Stitching Not Bitching
CHICAGO — John Chaich’s exhibition Queer Threads considers artworks that use craft aesthetics to reclaim, reimagine, and renegotiate previously accepted hierarchies of visual culture.
The Art of 3D Printing
CHICAGO — For artist Tom Burtonwood, the transition into 3D scanning and printing was as natural as popping food into a microwave rather than settling for cold leftovers.
10 Chicago Art Exhibitions to See This Winter
CHICAGO — There will be hundreds of exhibitions between now and the end of March, when the weather starts to warm up around these Middle West parts. Here’s 10.
Watching the Selfie Olympics
CHICAGO — The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, will begin on February 7, but the selfie olympics have already gone viral.
You’re Just Some Weirdo
LOS ANGELES — Every day, a weirdo is born. Some people feel as if they have the word terminally painted across their foreheads and need no reminders of their weirdness. Others visit artist Kristin Calabrese’s studio — as I did right after getting off a plane in Los Angeles, a city I’d never before been to and felt strange in — and declare it.
Transcending the Surface of Warhol and Marisol
CHICAGO — The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s Warhol and Marisol focuses on the conversational nature of artworks produced by artists Andy Warhol and Marisol Escobar, who got to know each other in the 1960s.
Hot Internet TVs on Frozen Winter Days
CHICAGO — Media theorist Marshall McLuhan once said that television is cool and radio is hot. This isn’t a temperature thing, but rather a classification of media based on the participation it involves from viewers.
The Topography of Emotion: New Study Maps Feelings in the Body
A new study by a team of Finnish researchers recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS) analyzes where we feel emotions in our bodies.