Tanya Kumar
acrylic, charcoal on fabriano paper
50cm x 65cm
Title One Like Away
Exploring the fraught search for external validation and approval through social media. The ‘ping’ of a ‘like’ might bring a temporary burst of ‘joy’ but is ultimately unsustainable. We are left hungry for more and dissatisfied. There is discomfort in the awareness of this vicious cycle, and my subject is caught in this storm. The multi-directional background marks reflect the frantic way we consume social media. The subject is fading into the background, losing herself, whilst the Instagram ‘like’ symbol stands out. Herein lies the irony – she is looking for something but losing herself in the process.
Aliza Nisenbaum use setting/background to develop a narrative, she describes her pieces: “figures become embraced by the spaces surrounding them” – I turned this on its head, with my subject wanting to feel “embraced”, but instead feeling engulfed by the social media storm around her.
Making art is a therapeutic process in itself and the subject of my work, I will continue to expore this with experimental media techniques at different scales.
“I wanted to “learn the rules, then learn to break them my way”, make
art mindfully, and create without perfectionism. I chose a subject (portraiture) that pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to immerse myself in making and put down the idea of creating something perfect...I felt the value in using my sketchbook to experiment. I would not have had the confidence to make a piece with a story, of this size, using colour and more than one medium if it were not for the exploratory exercises on this course.”