AMALIA ULMAN PRESS
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https://www.academia.edu/33147127/Fake_It_Until_You_Make_It_Amalia_Ulmans_Recent_Work
Related: What to See in London During Frieze Week Designed as a durational piece, each element on display is part of the larger installation, including several - Berlin Biennale and that was available to view online earlier this year. Related: Instagram Sensation Amalia Ulman on the Difference Between Fact and Fiction “Labour Dance” gets its name from the trend of women dancing vigorously to induce labor, and its accompanying text is a series of comments from online forums about the same. (“I danced to get to 5 cm (cervical dilation) I put on tyga rack city and went crazy lol also a great way to squeeze in exercise :)” writes a user in an excerpt from a group chat on the website whattoexpect.com.) Lining Arcadia Missa’s cavernous walls are large photographs of the New York City skyline, only slightly covered to the open-plan, “fail harder” work cultures of recent years. In one of the TV screens we have Ulman herself, in a red dress bearing the swell of a pregnant belly, holding a her face.
The artist is delightfully funny, humor delivered with a cheeky smile and an arm cocked jauntily over hip, without need for any Keaton-esque clumsiness or chaos. Viewers laugh out loud, as they do when Snapchats of pigeons with large heads totter across the screen, or when Ulman launches plastic water bottles with the hope of landing them perfectly upright every time. In this, there is a certain lightness to her work that allows for hu- mor to seep in without pretension or cliché. At the opening, with the promise of seeing Ulman herself, the gallery space spilled over with excited young - sessed with Amalia and her work,” declared one to artnet News. What is almost immediately clear is the intimacy generated between Ulman and her fans, following her, as they do, very closely on social media. Dressed on the night in a long red coat and red platform boots, Ulman is stunning, standing out from the crowd with a shy and endearing charm. There is of course a discrepancy—and one that is easy to con- fuse—between Ulman herself and her on-screen performance, which plays out through her various social - gram is most famous of all, visited by followers upwards of 126,000, which was featured in the work Experi- ences & Perfections at the Tate Modern’s “Performing for The Camera” group show this year.
In a sense, Ulman has pioneered the use of social media as performance, as total artwork, and juxtaposes this contemporaneity with the use of nostalgic objects, like the chunky TV screens placed at random upon position of access and privilege is highlighted by her mocking tone, and her delight in indulging the erratic. Ulman is entirely aware that it is indeed her privilege to be in a position to critique and complain, and in doing so she exposes the political lines that are ultimately marshalled by the art world in its entirety. Related: The Guerrilla Girls Size Up Europe at London’s Whitechapel Gallery its poignant punch: as viewers, we are too often engaged in the confusion of the public and the private per- sona, something Ulman negotiates with the introduction of her “pet” pigeon Bob. In an interview with artnet earlier this year, she explained Bob’s appearance in her art, saying “I’m currently working on a narrative where I developed a character for myself, based on people’s projections and precon- ceptions about me, and I also developed the role of a sidekick and counselor, a pigeon that sneaked into Related: Internet Cool Kids Amalia Ulman, Ryder Ripps, Petra Cortright Top Forbes’s 30 Under 30 List
Amalia Ulman and Bob the Pigeon. Image Courtesy @amaliaulman Instagram. “Labour Dance” is ultimately a critique of the aesthetics of power and position, and for this, it has developed its own special language and performative play. It is most effective in highlighting that the critical position it occupies it not accessible to all, and set deep under the rumbling railways arches of a fast-gentrifying Peck- ham, the irony is not lost on many.
In February, the artist Amalia Ulman posted to her 125,000 Instagram followers a picture of a home preg- message: a plus sign. Ulman’s message below the image read: “BOOM haha.” Her followers had grown used to provocative posts. In April 2014 Ulman began posting a series of images escort, having a boob job and drug-taking, before redemption through a new relationship, meditation and yoga. But in September that year she announced that it was all a performance. This prompted delight but - sional it was not a performance but a lie. Ulman is again prompting debate below the line. The pregnancy test shot has been followed by a number Argentinian grandmother; on September 16 she appeared with eight arms in a red dress, two of them cra- Many followers take Ulman’s pregnancy at face value, wishing her congratulations, asking the due date. Others, though, are steamed up by her artistic use of social media: “Faking pregnant really isn’t cool,” said one, with a thumbs down emoji; “#Faker”, admonished another. The pregnancy is “not really about a baby, it has more to do with the replication of self, and the idea of being pregnant with yourself, basically. But for a while people didn’t know if it was real or not,” says a very install the exhibition and it’s a return home of sorts: though she was born in Buenos Aires and grew up in Gijón, Spain, she studied at Central St Martins art college as a teenager and began her career here. When she showed some of the pregnancy images in her installation at the prestigious Berlin Biennale earli- er this year she “left it up to the audience to believe whatever they wanted to”. This is a key theme of these works: the way we construct our online identities. “No one ever really tells the truth online. But there’s this feeling that we should — that by not being true it’s less enjoyable in some way.” Her new show is called Labour Dance. Again its title results from Ulman’s fascination with the online world: about in the installation, set against wallpaper featuring clichéd stock images of the New York skyline. women write about it in a lot of blogs and things like that,” she explains. “That idea of the tight balloon and Thinking about pregnancy has led her to explore her “own desire” for it, she says, but also to consider the complications, of being unable to get pregnant because of work and travelling. “And also because I have a That disability relates to a bus crash Ulman was in as she travelled from New York to Chicago in 2013. Her legs were crushed and she was airlifted to hospital. She continues to bear the scars today. The accident inspired a poem and sound work, which formed part of a Geneva exhibition — which she directed from her hospital bed. “People say ‘Oh, you probably weren’t that sick because you made art’, but no — I made art because it made me feel better,” she recalls. “I have to plan things more ahead and have people helping me more.” And Ulman does a lot of preparation. For all the apparent randomness of her Instagram feed, for instance, she says that “with the performances I always have a script”. She wanted the work to be like a caricature of herself and she knew that she wanted a sidekick, so that the performance was “more like old theatre, or silent movies, more exaggerated: ‘This is a performance! This is Her sidekick is Bob, a pigeon. “I didn’t even care about pigeons — I don’t like birds. And I think that’s a challenge that I introduce into my work: I work with things I don’t necessarily like and then learn to like - Ulman’s Instagram posts involving her feathered friend show this change in her affections. there she is with Bob on Valentine’s Day, on a split-screen, harmonising with herself as she sings the chorus to a Pixies hit: Charles Barsotti. He even lives with Ulman and her boyfriend in LA. can be my son, he can be God, he can be my boyfriend — he can be all of these things.” In another solo exhibition, opening in Paris later this month, Ulman will explore “how Bob went from being a disgusting pigeon to being an art object”, she says. The performance has a distinct colour scheme — palpable when you see her Instagram posts in a grid — that evokes “old-school corporate America” and brands the performance, she says. Working from a studio And that in turn has inevitably led her to the US presidential election. “The election has been very important for the whole performance,” she says. She’s fascinated that it’s Hillary, who are educated and read the New Yorker, and ‘white trash’. It was impossible for me to ignore that, because of the different material, like people using memes for politics, which is crazy.” The perfor- mance will end as the election is won and lost. Among the ugliest material she has found online is in the material posted by “alt-Right” commentators: the Drumpf supporters who are among the most worthy candidates for Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” tag. “I was interested in the alt-Right and the aesthetics they use to communicate: the anti-feminist memes, the ‘feminist cancer’, all this stuff,” Ulman explains. She has looked at prominent alt-Right individuals such as Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopoulos and “how all these people communicate their memes and their hate speech” with their oft-repeated mantra that they are speaking “common sense”. “But they really use it to construct their own truths,” she says. “And that’s what Drumpf does: he constructs his own truths and people listen to him and think it makes sense. Because, of course, you can construct your own commonsensical argument according to what is convenient to you.” Ulman’s is much in demand: her work was shown at the Whitechapel Gallery and Tate Modern earlier this year. She’s unfazed by appearing in big museums because she’s so emotionally immersed in her latest piece. “With the Tate show I wasn’t excited at all because it was an old work,” she says. “It was good, because my mum gets to enjoy that. So she came over and she was, like ‘Ooh, the Tate!’ But personally I didn’t feel anything — that’s dead for me.” -
Amalia Ulman: Labour Dance is at Arcadia Missa, SE15 until November 5; arcadiamissa.com constructing-truth-and-identity-a3357866.html If you look at the Instagram account of artist Amalia Ulman, the location of the most recent post is 811 Wilshire LLC in Los Angeles, and it was put up today, at 10:30 a.m. Paci!c Standard Time. Which would lead her 126,000 followers to believe that she was in Los Angeles this morning, but that’s impossible, because I met her at a restaurant by the foot of London Bridge here in London at 2:30 p.m. local time, or 11:30 a.m. in Los Angeles. Ruling out teleportation, it’s safe to say that Ulman was misleading her followers. It’s not the !rst time this has happened. For her durational performance Excellences & Perfections, she used Instagram to craft a narrative about “Amalia Ulman” that documented her relationship, breakup, plastic surgery, and New Age recovery. For Privilege, which is still ongoing, she’s been charting the pregnancy of “Amalia Ulman,” posting sel!es with a bulging belly. I shouldn’t have to tell you that Ulman is not pregnant, and didn’t have plastic surgery. But her manipulation of the picture-based social media app has earned her accolades both in the States, where she is now based, and here in London, where she had a show at the Tate earlier this year. Here are some sample headlines. “"e Instagram Artist who Fooled "ousands,” said the BBC. “Is "is the First Instagram Masterpiece?” asked the Telegraph. “Amalia Ulman is the First Great Instagram Artist” is the headline in a recent pro!le inElle. “Oh, I hated that,” she said of the Elle headline, laughing. “You know what? "at’s like clickbait culture.” We were on the second #oor of a spot above a sprawling Epcot-like marketplace, with little outposts for nearly 100 cuisines. Beforehand, we stopped by an Argentinian food stand (Ulman, who is 27, was born in Argentina but grew up in Spain, and went to Central Saint Martin in London) to pick up some alfajores, the chocolate and dulce de leche confection made by the Argentinian foodstu$s giant Havanna, because I told her I had never tried one. After completing Privilege, which will come to its conclusion at the end of the presidential election in the United States, Ulman will be moving on from the time-based performances that play out on her Instagram and entering the next phase of her practice. "e show up in London at the moment, at the refreshingly punk South London gallery Arcadia Missa, incorporates balloons that rise and fall, a motif informed by, though not strictly tied to, the idea of pregnancy. ("e show is called “Labour Dance.”) Later this month, at New Galerie in Paris, another show will continue to ease out of the Instagram-based works she’s been known for. “I’m visiting a bunch of universities, so I’ll still be talking about this, but my next project is not performative,” Ulman told me. Her practice has always been varied, and deeply intelligent, but it’s the Instagram account that has in!ltrated the mainstream. Ulman stresses that it’s just a part of her output, and not what she’s producing in her studio on a daily basis. “I hate Instagram—I used Instagram because it’s there, not because I like it,” she said. We were discussing all the press labeling her as an “Instagram artist.” “I’ve considered these works to be net art, because they function online,” she said. “But if you’ve put your works on YouTube, are you a YouTube artist? Not really.” "at doesn’t mean that she considers the performance-based works to be inferior—it’s just that they’re in the past. Ulman likened it to putting it into a !ling cabinet and storing it away. Because she is in e$ect capturing an invented life, there is truth at play within the !ction—it’s an approach that allows her to wobble on that preci- pice between irony and sincerity, she explains. “"ere’s a di$erence between humor and parody,” she said. “People denounce my performance and say it’s like, you’re laughing at basic bitches. But, you know, I’m also a little bit of a basic bitch—I’m laughing at myself a little bit. I’m also all these things—the cat lady, the crazy female artist, the feminist, and I’m the conservative woman who goes to work every day. And I’m tapping into all these things. I don’t stand on the outside and just judge.” More than anything, she’s surprised the Instagram performances have lasted this long, after the bait-and-switch behind Excellences & Perfections was revealed many times over—in high-pro!le publications, and on o%cial Art Basel Miami Beach panel discussions. She realized that, on Instagram, there is no limit to the willingness to believe in a lie, or to be outraged once viewers !nally admit they’ve been duped. People still comment on her pic- tures, either congratulating her on her pregnancy or insulting her for trying to fool them, despite ample evidence that it is an art performance. (She likened this latter attitude to that of Donald Trump supporters and members of the alt-right.) But even now that she’s planning on focusing on other aspects of her practice, she said she’s proud of the perfor- mances—and proud of the fact that she could somehow do it twice. “I was surprised about, after already doing one performance, people are still angry at me!” she said. “Like—‘You faked the pregnancy? How could you!’ I was actually happy that I could still play that card again. I thought it was over.” Copyright 2016, Art Media ARTNEWS, llc. 110 Greene Street, 2nd Fl., New York, N.Y. 10012. All rights reserved. http://www.artnews.com/2016/10/04/im-laughing-at-myself-a-little-bit-amalia-ulman-on-her-show-in-london- and-ending-her-instagram-performance/ AMALIA ULMAN IN NEW YORK, JULY 2015.
Last year at Art Basel Miami Beach, a little-known artist named Amalia Ulman appeared on a panel called “Instagram as an Artistic Medium.” Instagram was for real selves, real insight, real art, and above all, self- ies, according to her esteemed co-panelists Simon de Pury, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Klaus Biesenbach, and the company’s CEO, Kevin Systrom. Their points, however, were somewhat compromised by the fact that the - lences & Perfections chronicled her character’s move to “the big city,” initial elation, a nervous breakdown, and eventual self-acceptance. Taking cues from popular users, Ulman played up gendered symbols of lux- in things, and people still think the internet is a place of authenticity, but everyone is selecting, or even fabri- cating, what they post.”
gallery, an installation of desolate wire sculptures as a meditation on violence, partly inspired by her hospi- talization after a bus crash in 2013. (It is now on view at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.) In a show - essay about the history of diaries and women, she ponders “cute” journals with locks given to girls and con- trasts them to anonymous online spaces where people detail taboo experiences like fasting, plastic surgery, and prostitution. “Everything is so public now, so everyone self-censors,” she says. “It’s only within these diaries or forums where that’s not the case.” She plans to trap viewers in a cushy white room without their phones, where they will be subjected to the video’s infantilizing voice-over until their pre-assigned number is called and they are permitted to leave.
- ic themes have emerged: in particular, she riffs on millennial narcissism, teasing out performative displays of “pretty” and “cute” that serve to mask conspicuous consumption and self-involvement. Growing up in the north of Spain, she made virtual friends in chat rooms and is still curious about the nature of human con- nection on the internet. Ulman has also taken up pole-dancing classes for exercise since her injuries from the bus crash left her unable to jog, and will choreograph pole-dance scenes for a play she’s working on. She’s even built a dance studio into her new home in Los Angeles. Notably, Ulman has decided against having access to the internet in the apartment. “I like having some sort of restraints,” she says. “I need a space where I can be bored and look at the ceiling and think.”
We spoke with Ulman over lunch when she was visiting New York.
AMALIA ULMAN: Yes. It's a one-bedroom apartment, just for me. Half is a ballerina studio: I have mirrors, the pole, the barre, the stretch rope. I don't need the internet. I never did ballet, but my mom used to dance, and I think she never saw me as [suited] for ballet because I was kind of clumsy.
ULMAN: I started doing it for the pictures for Excellences and Perfections, and then I started doing it be- cause I cannot run anymore. I used to run every night and I love that buzz. It takes a long time to get into keep on going because there's so much to learn.
I'm very interested in including pole-dancing into my work, especially because of the background it has and how it's tied to pornography, to prostitution, to strip tease. I know a lot about the sex industry, but I've never been to a strip club. It's not like I don't like it, but I'm just interested in the technicality, how the body relates to that. For women that do pole-dancing, their bodies are different, way more muscular, and they're not fem-
SMALL: It's, theoretically, traditionally for someone else's entertainment but actually you have to be pretty powerful to do it.
ULMAN: It's confusing because it's tied to the sex industry. There's ignorance about the history of it, like circuses and all these kinds of performativity.
ULMAN: Just holding the pole. But that's the studio I still go to.
SMALL: Did you research that location, or the others that you photographed yourself at, or was it coinci-
ULMAN: I have to say, I really do plan out most of my locations, but I also get really lucky, to be honest. I leave a lot to chance. I like putting myself in situations where things will happen, instead of planning ev- erything...I feel like I'm very stubborn. I will insist, "It's not working! It's going to work!" And then something really bad happens and I think that I shouldn't have insisted so much. I should have let it go. So, in my work
Forcing things or trying to manipulate them too much, in the end, that doesn't work for me. I need to be around someone a few times to remember their names; it's the same for lived experiences. That's why I travel a lot because I can't just read or research something. I have to go through it to be able to understand it. Which makes things interesting, but it is kind of dangerous sometimes. But, I can't work otherwise.
ULMAN: I mean, less so now, but when I was younger I would put myself in slightly dangerous situations because I felt I needed to go through them instead of just reading about them. I would travel by myself a lot—too much—without any experience. I don't regret it because it was obviously a good learning experi-
SMALL: But it is so important to throw yourself into situations where you don't know what is going to hap- pen. Because when there is a situation that you don't expect, and you don't choose, then you're better equipped to handle it, I feel.
ULMAN: That's why I still enjoy libraries. I was a librarian [at Central Saint Martins] and I always liked that Everything starts getting smaller and smaller and smaller, whereas if you go to an analog place, like in a library, or if you travel somewhere, something will happen in front of you that will change your research, your direction. That's something I appreciate. One of my favorite things was putting [other students'] books back. There would be books that I would know, and then there would be another book I would have never research and leaving something up to chance and not having absolute control.
SMALL: Everyone talks about how "the internet is so limitless," but most people just go on Facebook, check Twitter, and check Instagram. It's a cycle. Moving to your piece for Frieze Projects, The Annals of Private History, which you are doing in collaboration with Arcadia Missa gallery, can you walk me through the con-
ULMAN: I'm very interested in this idea of women writing diaries and how all that information gets lost. The internet has all of these anonymous diaries that are main sources of information for this kind of knowledge that is not published anywhere, [because it is] looked down upon, or taboo. For example, as an escort, you can get guidelines and tips. There are also fasting diaries—people who go on fasting retreats and start writing diaries—and you can see the progress of them losing spark...some of them are transcripts from paper and [they write things like], "I can't hold a pen anymore because I'm so weak." There are anonymous diaries for plastic surgery. It's knowledge in the form of diary, anonymous diaries, that build these parallel histories that are not a part of the mainstream. But, at least they're not lost. Before, I'd say that these diaries would be written in a notebook and be forgotten. Now, I believe they have relevance.
SMALL: And it's in the service of others.
ULMAN: I think in a place as social as the internet, right now, these spaces are still old school, anonymous sources of information. It's purely about knowledge, instead of creating this cultural capital through your image or whatever. It's in the anonymous, hidden blogs where these people will post all the information, and all the frustration, tears. [For] other people, all these feelings and emotions [are hidden] because every- Everyone self-censors. I think it's also because so much pressure, or value, has been put on branding and monetizing that there's the mindset, "Oh, it's not worth it if no one's going to see it."
SMALL: And your self-brand can't be nuanced. Everyone wants to know what to expect. Maybe a tiny surprise, but nothing actually shocking. You have to give people what they want without offending them or boring them.
It's normal. It's becoming more and more normal to be conscious of those things. It's funny how people still take it with this value of truth.
ULMAN: I'm thinking about it as a video essay. The environment is inspired by a visit to the American embassy in Madrid, and also to my recent visit to North Korea. Continuing my interest in waiting rooms and "non-places," we are creating a claustrophobic space and a series of guidelines to make the visitors uncomfortable; we're taking away their phones and shoes. The idea is for people to focus and follow the video's instructions, given by the narrator, which are directed to the audience. The script itself plays with ideas of control and submission, like in abusive relationships, but also authoritarian regimes and political propaganda. It's all about the idea of the diary and keeping things inside, so I want people to have a dia- logue within themselves, with the video.
FOR MORE ON THE ARTIST, VISIT HER WEBSITE.
ARCADIAMISSA.COM 35 DUKE STREET
[email protected] LONDON , W1U 1LH