The Evolution of the Body in Contemporary Art and Digital Media: Asger Carlsen, Julie Rrap, Leah Schrager, Juliana Huxtable
Date
2022
Authors
Mowbray, Alexandra
Editors
Advisors
Mansfield, Lisa
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Thesis
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Abstract
Digital media has fundamentally altered the way the body in contemporary art is represented
and viewed inside the museum and gallery and on the screen. From technical production
facilitated by photographic editing to global visibility by an interactive audience, the myriad
platforms of digital media have created a contemporary visual culture that reflects a shift
from body-consciousness to body-centricity. While social networking sites have fostered
inclusive communities shaped by bodily images and identities, technological advancements
that manipulate and fragment the body have empowered artists to question and critique the
enduring lure of corporal objectification and truth in an age of increased visual presence,
physical difference, and cultural diversity. This thesis seeks to examine how the creative
processes and fields of display peculiar to the digital age have influenced the representation
and reception of the body in the contemporary digital age of the twenty-first century. It
investigates the impact of digital media, including social media, on the making and meaning
of the body as a concept in the artistic practice of four contemporary artists of different
generational (‘Baby Boomer’, ‘Generation X’, and ‘Millennial’) and gender perspectives:
Asger Carlsen; Julie Rrap; Leah Schrager; and Juliana Huxtable. Despite the shared
concentration on bodily representation using a digital lens, each artist amplifies a unique
aspect of contemporary body culture derived from the digital landscape of filmic affect and
the materiality of screen violence, feminist discourses on body objectification and
commodification, the sexualised body and online pornography, and bodies contextualised by
queer and racial politics. These changes in digital culture and process have resulted in
contemporary interpretations of the abject, uncanny, and grotesque, and encouraged the
emergence of the online persona.
School/Discipline
School of Art History
Dissertation Note
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Art History, 2023
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