Show everything and you are!
Milo Moiré’s performance series Naked Selfies thematize and caricature the pop-cultural mass phenomenon of self-portraits in social media. Equipped with a tripod camera and self-timer, the entirely naked artist invited people in Paris (Place du Trocadéro), Berlin (Alexanderplatz), Düsseldorf (Rheinuferpromenade and NRW-Forum during the exhibition “Ego update”) and Basel (Barfüsserplatz during the Art Basel) to take a selfie together with her. In contrast to Moiré`s previous performances like “Plopegg Painting Performance– A Birth of a Picture”, which was performed during the Art Cologne 2014 or „The Script System“ in 2013/2014, this work requires interaction.
Moiré stated that, here, stripping down to her bare skin is more than symbolism: „Through this physical, bodily interaction between me as a self-exposing avatar and the people wanting a selfie, I want to establish a point of contact between the real and the digital revelation of intimacy.“ It is a public collision between palpable and abstract privacy. With her “Naked Selfies,” she embodies a caricature of self-presentation and represents the link between tangible and virtual life.
“The people who take a naked selfie with me actually disclose something about themselves, present themselves to the world with a statement. Show everything and you are!“, Moiré says. We all reveal ourselves constantly on Facebook and Instagram, showing where we are, with whom, what we’re doing…in fact, exhibiting all kinds of sensitive personal data in the internet. In the “Naked Selfies,” we can also observe how tempting and pleasurable it is to focus on and to form our own identities. Countless volunteers took advantage of this opportunity to present themselves with the artist.
On Sunday, July 5, 2015, Milo Moiré was arrested in Paris when she carried out her Naked Selfies Performance on the Place du Trocadéro, in front of Paris’s Eiffel Tower. After her release from prison Milo announced: “They could take my body captive, but my spirit remained free. Freedom is the greatest good in our society. I will continue and will carry out my performances in other countries.”
