Feed

My work explores how the introduction of social media has affected the ways in which we create, perceive, and value artwork. The ubiquity of social media provides artists with a new avenue through which they can share their work. However, social media's ubiquity also means that everyone can share anything and call it art. Without the appraisal of art provided through traditional means — gallery and museum exhibitions, art reviews and critiques — how can we determine what is art and what isn't? Who gets to make that decision?

The Society of Independent Artists would have argued that no one has the power to make that decision; the establishment of the group in 1916 was aimed specifically at creating a space where anyone could exhibit art without being restricted by the rigid, traditional government-sponsored Salon exhibitions. In 1917, Marcel Duchamp submitted Fountain to the inaugural exhibition in order to challenge the Society's claim that it was "without jury, nor reward". The piece, comprising of a urinal purchased from a sanitary ware supplier and signed by a fictional "R. Mutt", was deemed unfit by the Society's directors to show in the exhibition. Duchamp's urinal submission revealed how even in supposedly free and democratic realms, art's value and worth is ultimately at the mercy of its audience's subjectivity.

Despite transpiring over a century ago, Fountain and the Society's subsequent rejection of it is still incredibly relevant in today's social media-obsessed society. While social media's abundance of diverse users and low barrier to entry liken it to an even freer, modern twist on the Society, Feed begs the question: is it truly a juryless, rewardless method of exhibiting art to the world?