The art of the selfie

The Tel Aviv Museum of Art presents the interactive family exhibit ‘My Selfie & I.’

By JESSICA VRAZILEK
PICTURE PERFECT: ‘My Selfie & I’ exhibit at Tel Aviv Museum of Art. (photo credit: Courtesy)
PICTURE PERFECT: ‘My Selfie & I’ exhibit at Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Every year the Tel Aviv Museum of Art presents an interactive and socially relevant exhibition specifically geared for children and families.
This year’s exhibition focuses on the trending and pervasive theme of the selfie. Aptly titled “My Selfie & I,” the exhibition invites museum goers of all ages to become part of the art on show by sharing photographs from the exhibition directly on social networks.
Visitors actively participate in the exhibition and encounter their own image in numerous fashions through an assortment of technological interactions with computers, cameras, touch screens and projectors.
The exhibit and activities compel thought and dialogue, while raising questions about the nature of the selfie.
“The selfie indicates the need for constant change, characteristic of our era, and is the product of technological development” said exhibition curator Sara Raiman Shor. “The photographer taking a self-portrait seeks to halt the moment and store it in Internet memory, but from the moment of sharing the private immediately becomes public, and is uncontrollably disseminated via the worldwide Web.”
Offering a handful of fun and inventive options for manipulating the selfie, from fun-house mirrors to green-screening historic art backgrounds, the unique software and technology developed specifically for this exhibition enables visitors to create artistically inspired photographs of themselves using their own cell phones or the tablets provided. The selfies taken with the Museum’s tablets are instantaneously projected on to large screens at the center of the gallery, while those taken with personal devices can be posted to the Museum’s Facebook profile on the monitor at the gallery entrance or personally uploaded to the photographer’s preferred social media platform.
At the entrance to the gallery space are works by the artist duo Muntean & Rosenblum. Austrian- born Markus Muntean and Israeli Adi Rosenblum present two portrait drawings created from the perspective typical of selfies, alongside a video work that scrolls through Facebook selfies while theorizing on the concept.
“For many centuries the production of portraits was one of the most important tasks for the painter. With the advent of photography the important task of capturing the features of a human being for posterity was consequently taken over by the interplay between this new technology and those who handled it. At present, an endless stream of selfies emerges from an abundance of digital image making devices, often directly fed into the continuous streams of social networks, and, if they are at all perceived by human eyes, this often happens instantaneously” say Muntean & Rosenblum.
The exhibition takes place on the lower level of the museum’s main building, and is sponsored by the British Friends of the Art Museums in Israel.
“My Selfie & I” runs throughout Succot. For more info visit www.tamuseum.com.