Jesse Darling

Jesse Darling is a multimedia artist and performer, creates installations, video works, photographs, animated GIFs and Twitter poetry. They are also an author of manifestos and critical texts. Employing various means of expression, the work of Jesse Darling challenges the traditional notion of art object and the definition of performance. The artist explores contemporary forms of mediation associated with queer expression, subjectivity and body politics, analysing them through their personal experience of new technology. 

Darling's two works in the exhibition are self-portraits taken by the artist with a webcam in their kitchen as an answer to the convention of the stereotypical selfie. They are at once a form of camouflage and an unabashed display of the artist's own nakedness as they negotiate the boundaries of self-creation and power over the observer’s gaze.

Darling presents their likeness on two tablets which prompt tactile interaction with the artist’s portraits and suggest an invasion of their personal space – both in the bodily and virtual sense. The titles of the works reference popular filters and functions in the computer programme Photoshop, which lets users improve and modify digital images.