Tester

about a sexual Instagram photo
posted by a consenting party. OG
sad girl artist and Instagram super
star Audrey Wollen told I-D,
What Prince is doing is colonising
and profiting off a territory of
the internet that was created by
a community of young girls, who,
needless to say, do not have the
cultural space Prince has. Selecting
specific bodies from a sea of images,
amputating them from their
context, and then naming himself
the owner of those bodies.
Prince takes what was a consensual
picture of a body and places the
body in a non-consensual context.
Part of the appeal of the project,
part of its “sexiness,” is that he
throws into question the agency
of those whose pictures he uses.
Now, instead of a woman posting
a sexy picture of herself online, you
are spying on her body in a context
she never consented to. He
re-voyeurizes the bodies of young
women, who, in posting pictures
of themselves online, are seeking
to profit off their own bodies and
working to reclaim the theme of
the young nude female as something
owned and controlled by
young the nude female herself. By
using their photos he forces them
back into the role of passive model.
He renders them innocent again.
Ripping away the agency of choice
and credit, he sends them reeling
back in the realm of spied-upon
and preyed-upon. The issue is not
whether Prince used photographs
he did not take, the issue is that
Prince is laying claim to the visual
capital of the bodies of those who,
through designing, curating and
consenting to publication, have
acted to reclaim what is rightfully
theirs, namely their bodies.
Of course, not all the Instagram
users included in New
Portraits are offended. Karley
Sciortino, a writer for Vogue and
the woman behind Slutever.com,
told Business Insider that she was
“honored” to be in Prince’s show,
because he was a “successful artist.”
However, Karley Scortino is
already a well-known writer and
critic. Many of the younger and
less well-known participants were
not as enthused by their inclusion,
especially those who were trying
to own and profit from their own
bodies. For example, Sean Fader, a
young recent MFA graduate had
a picture from his performance
art project Wishing Pelt seized by
Prince. Fader’s project consisted of
letting people take selfies of themselves
rubbing his chest hair. They
were told to make a wish while
they were doing so, and that if they
posted the picture to social media
the wish would come true. Sean
expressed his frustration to Hyperallergic,
saying,
There’s obviously that part of me
04