STATEMENT

Although physical geographies seem to echo hostility, the utopic notion of world society has never been as technically reachable as it is through the digital. The internet has enabled a wider map of representations doubled with an instant way of accessing information.

More importantly, the digital revolution made us aware of our contemporaries and their ideas, all around the world and in real-time. For the art world, the internet appears to be the perfect space for experimenting with borderlessness, multicultural appreciation, and finally, fully digital formats. Since everyone produces images, everyone produces information. Paradoxically, because of the accuracy of algorithm targeting, this supposedly widens the spectrum of diverse information and ends up looking like a comfortable bubble of pleasing and like-minded data sharers.

Forty years ago, Flusser wrote that we were entering a Post-historical and dimensionless era through and within which all our information would merge to form a“global brain”. this visionary statement raised sociological implications including mutational notions of cultures and the contemporary relevance of nationality within cyberspace worldwide.

With an interest in cultural studies, I delved into post-colonial studies, I started thinking of the notion of identification on a broader spectrum- that of a global phenomenon motivated by concurrent ideologies. Being simultaneously familiar and distant from the culture I am assimilated to, my work aims to remap the idea of a North-South/ East-West culture shock. I transport the viewer into cultural identities’ explorations, questioning the socially accepted symbols and frames of reference that shape the given identity. My work, very much like postmodernism’s deconstruction of socio-cultural understanding, is a journey into the de-contextualization of codes and conduct.

Reshaping of accepted belief, which inherently injects emotions of confusion, and discomfort – all emotions that oil the wheel of thought and perspective. Through the use of visually pleasing mass multimedia installations, I can translate thought into experience, offering a fluid platform for reflection. Consequently, this investigation into the processes of identification can be seen as social determinism and perhaps results in personal acculturation. 

Yasmine Laraqui