Beauty standards and alienation through social media addiction are illustrated in this artwork. Credits: Courtesy of Abby Lenz
In an era of disinformation and selfie-saturated platforms that also provide news, students are using artwork to encourage conscious consumption of online media.
“Is This the Truth?,” created in partnership with Urban Arts Space’s Hybrid Arts Lab, features a diverse array of art collected by James O’Donnell, a professor and graduate student in the art education program, over the past several years from students as part of his Ph.D. dissertation.
O’Donnell said his dissertation is focused on how undergraduates relate to potentially misleading or manipulative media imagery online. O’Donnell surveyed his students, asking them to create a piece of artwork representing their relationship to the media.
Skeptical of dominant authority and media messages, O’Donnell said some questions that fueled his research were: “Why are people so easily misled?” “Why do people get wrapped up in conspiracy theories?” and “What can my field do to address this?”
Although his work is still ongoing, O’Donnell said he already has some interesting findings.
“Even people who have grown up with the internet their whole lives struggle to consistently discern, to reliably evaluate information they find online,” O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell said although most students could be misled, he also said depicting students as completely passive and mesmerized by online platforms would be dishonest.
“They are extremely interested in this issue of media literacy, and they want to be better at it,” O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell said art education has a role to play when it comes to social media and misinformation because art can address issues of visual perception and subjectivity.
In the exhibition, students depicted social media with germs or the shackling of consumers to electronic devices, among other topics.
Abby Lenz, a second-year in middle-school education and a contributor to the show, depicts social media as an altered mirror in her artwork. She said she has no specific artistic background but has dabbled in Photoshop in the past.
The artwork she created is a photo of herself at a desk staged with a mirror, makeup products and jewelry. She photoshopped her face out of the photo and replaced it with pictures of models and pop icons as well as a few words such as “beautiful,” “sexy” and “perfect.”
Lenz said she settled on words that are used to describe others on social media. She said the quote, “What consumes your mind controls your life,” which is written on the bottom of her photo, perfectly fits the subject of her artwork.
Her piece is particularly dedicated to beauty guidelines communicated through social media that women may feel they have to comply with, she said.
“I think media heavily influences a lot of young women’s lives with what we see in the beauty standards that we are held to, and how society sort of constructs a woman’s happiness through her appearance,” Lenz said.
Lenz said she didn’t use social media before high school, but it evolved into regular consumption of multiple apps as time went on. As of now, she said she takes more steps to use social media in a smarter way by unfollowing people when necessary or avoiding Instagram for the first hour of the day.
Lenz said O’Donnell’s class prompted discussion about timely subjects such as social justice and O’Donnell was especially good at encouraging healthy discussion between peers and conveying different viewpoints on subjects.
O’Donnell said he believes in the power of personal responsibility when dealing with this topic, making sure students have tools at their disposal when they go out into the workplace and can move from being passive to active receivers of information.
Still, he said he remains aware that systemic issues call for more systemic, large-scale solutions.
“I don’t think we can educate ourselves out of this problem alone,” O’Donnell said.
The exhibition will be on display on the Urban Arts Space website through April 18.
