Pre-stampitas

Here’s some of the experimental work I was producing before I actually came up with the concept for my graduate thesis. These are all just snapshots of my friends that i liked from my archives, deliberately offset, and then painted on to obliquely reference to Catholic prayer cards, a concept i later took in a different direction.

I was playing around with the ideas of spontenaiety and intentionality, which i think are interesting to consider especially in this age of digital self-representation (read: INSTAGRAM ISN’T WHAT IT SEEMS). It’s almost as if we have an anticipated sense of vouyerism – like we know people are going to be watching us but in order to not seem full of ourselves, we need to seem surprised that it happens. The humblebrag is performance art, seriously.

I think my actual Stampitas project tackled these ideas better, but the following images comprise its ancestry. These are all inkjet prints on crappy cardstock, about 5 x 7.5 inches in dimensions.