Contemporary technology prompted a new phenomenon in the field of
self-portraiture.
The “selfie” is a term coined recently to define the combination of a portable camera on mobile or webcams, and the possibility to share through social networks; it has shifted the focus of self-portraits from “Who am I?” to “What do I look like? ”or “Do I look good?”.
In Boglárka Nagy’s new self-portrait series we can find traces of both genres: On one hand, her portraits are posed pictures of an already beautiful subject (no one can fail to notice her beauty) than they can perh
aps be classified as
“selfies”
. On the other hand, in contrast to the instantaneous snapshots of the “selfie”, Nagy’s paintings reflect the tradition of self-portraiture, in which the master invests massive amounts of time and skill to capturing the subtle detail of the subject’s character.
In a subtle gesture, Nagy juxtaposes the highly stylized aesthetic of the self
portrait
, historically often associated with the male artist and its philosophical meditation on the self, with the ‘selfie’ whose very name indicates its associations with popular culture, the feminine, the amateur photographer, and playful narcissism. By merging two seemingly antithetical genres, the artist challenges us to think more about different ways the portrait and the ‘self’ are produced visually and their relationship to audience.
