From Selfie to Self-Expression, this exciting exhibition explores the history of “selfies”. Held at the Saatchi Gallery in London with free entry, it is going to stay on, until the 23rd of July 2017. The exhibition’s run time has been extended since it was very popular with the visitors.
The idea behind it, developed through the partnership between the gallery and Huawei. The aim was to showcase the creative and artistic value mobile phones have, and how they provide the means to create art to a wider audience. With that in mind they announced the #SaatchiSelfie competition which had an overwhelming response. They received over 14.000 submissions of selfies from people all around the world. The gallery also asked 10 contemporary British photographers to produce pictures for the exhibition using Huawei smartphones.
The visitors get the chance to look at works of self-expression created over the course of 500 years. Starting with self-portraits of painters like Vincent Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Picasso and, Frida Kahlo displayed on digital screens which you can double-tap, moving to contemporary artists all the way to selfies by celebrities like Kim Kardashian. One of the rooms in the back is set with projections of countless selfies, on all four walls, where most visitors take a selfie in front of the selfies.
Curator and CEO at the Saatchi Gallery, Nigel Hurst has said about the exhibition: “Art galleries can still be pretty intimidating places, and our role is really simple – it is to bring contemporary art and how visual imagery is now being made to as wide an audience as possible. Something like a selfie is a very good entry point.”
The exhibition seems to point out that taking selfies is a natural evolution of self-portrayal and wanting to dismiss the discussion around its validity within the art world.
https://www.saatchigallery.com/
