#nofilter Installation
My senior thesis show
April 2014 | Duration: One semester
Overview
#NOFILTER, my final thesis show, was held at University of Virginia's Ruffin Hall. I have always been interested in how social media, pop culture, and media affect society. By using technology to combine old paintings, like Nighthawks, Starry Night, Birth of Venus, and various works of Roy Liechtenstein, and various aspects of the internet, I wanted to bring new context to the old paintings and emphasize the differences between what was valued in the past compared to now.
#NOFILTER deals with the growing popularity of hashtags, ups and downs of the internet, including various social media outlets, and people's desire to be affirmed through their posts. Like the meaning of "no filter," I wanted my art pieces to reveal the truth of social media without filtering out anything.
The details
The show had four pieces, which you can read about below:
Fading Beauty | Fading Beauty explores how societal perceptions of beauty shift across time. Using animated transitions, I juxtaposed two iconic female portraits—The Birth of Venus and Portrait of Madame X—with visuals inspired by The Biggest Loser, a modern reality show centered on weight loss. By altering their body sizes in motion, I aimed to challenge viewers to reflect on how beauty is not fixed, but a social construct shaped by culture, media, and era. The piece questions what we deem “ideal” and who gets to define it.
Facebook Drama (left) | Facebook Drama critiques the normalized behavior of online "stalking" in the age of social media. Drawing visual inspiration from Roy Lichtenstein’s iconic pop art, I created two fictional Facebook profiles—one male, one female—styled after his characters. The animation follows the woman as she obsessively refreshes and revisits the man’s page in a never-ending loop, capturing the compulsive nature of digital voyeurism and our culture’s fixation with observing others from a distance.
Instaselfie (right) | Instaselfie draws a playful parallel between historical self-portraits and today’s social media culture. The animation reimagines iconic painted self-portraits as Instagram posts, complete with familiar hashtags like #throwbackthursday and #flashbackfriday. By merging classical art with modern-day selfie culture, the piece highlights how the desire to capture and share one’s image—whether through oil paint or smartphone—has always been part of human expression, spanning generations (including my selfie-loving grandma).
Google Maps | In a world where apps like Google Maps make it possible to explore any location with just a few keystrokes, our relationship with landscapes has fundamentally changed. Art Meets Maps reflects on this shift by animating iconic works like Nighthawks and Starry Night with the familiar Google Maps search bar overlay. Once captured only through the artist’s eye, these scenes are now accessible from anywhere, prompting us to consider what it means to see a place—and how technology alters our sense of presence and distance.