This Is Not An Experience
The inextricability of reality and the digital world is becoming more familiar, giving rise to the sarcastic phrase, “If it’s not on Instagram did it actually happen?” Drawing a direct parallel to René Magritte’s “La Trahison des images” (The Treachery of images), this is a statement on our tendency to mistakenly equate social media posts with experiences.
Magritte said of his painting (which depicted a pipe with the phrase underneath “This is not a pipe”), “The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture ‘This is a pipe’, I’d have been lying!”
Magritte’s work forces us to question the immediate connection we draw between our perception of reality and language, and I aimed to similarly contest the relationship between a rectangular visual and a fully sensory experience. Yes, there are memories and emotions associated with each timestamped post, but it does not prove that I was there in reality, nor can the full picture of my life, of who I am, of what has shaped me, be pieced together through my online presence.