The Julia Stoschek Foundation presents a group exhibition in Düsseldorf with works by twelve artists and one collective that examine the use and transformation of diaries in video and other technologies of representation from the 1970s onward. This exhibition runs in parallel to the presentation of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s work The Electronic Diaries of Lynn Hershman Leeson (1984–2019).
The exhibition gathers work by artists of different generations that have employed imaging technologies to center themselves, their personal relationships, and their emotional experiences in their work. From self-portraiture and home videos to private phone messages and chatroom conversations made public, the artists in DIGITAL DIARIES carve a space for their intimate and situated experiences. In these works, they keep a record of their daily lives while simultaneously making the claim that even if these seem like mundane or quotidian subjects, they can be seen through larger political lens. Moving beyond simply confiding, their works open up from the personal to a larger critical reflection on how representational concerns are linked to issues of gender and identity. In line with theorist Amelia Jones’s statement that “We don’t know how to exist anymore without imagining ourselves as a picture,” the exhibition explores the intricate links between technologies of representation and contemporary subjectivities and identities.
