**Contents**


## **Acknowledgments**

I must first express my deepest appreciation for Oliva Andereggen at MDPI for her immense patience, diligence, and guidance. I would also like to thank Laura Wagner at MDPI for her ongoing support. Not only have you both been instrumental in making this project seamlessly come to fruition, but it has also been a pleasure working with you.

I am humbled by the generosity the peer reviewers brought to this project. Their astute and meaningful insights ensure that this project will be a substantive interdisciplinary intervention in the field. It was a pleasure receiving your feedback and input that helped to shape each chapter. Thank you ever so much for your capacity to offer rigorous, creative, and critical feedback to this project.

Finally, I must extend my most heartfelt gratitude to the authors and artists included in this volume, for their brilliance, hard work, and dedication. I have learned so much from each author and deeply value the intellectual exchange that this project represents. I applaud the diverse, intersectional, critical, and creative approaches to the topic of self- representation that the collective works gathered herein bring to the field. Moreover, it has been an honor working with everyone in the process of editing this volume. I look forward to continuing our conversations far into the distant future.

This book is dedicated to Derek Conrad Murray.

*Ace Lehner (Ed.)*

## **About the Editor**

#### LEHNER, ACE

Ace Lehner is an interdisciplinary scholar and artist specializing in critical engagement with identity and representation; history, theory, and criticism of contemporary art; photography theory; queer and trans theory; and critical race studies. Recently, Lehner has presented their research at the College Art Association Conference, Rochester Institute of Technology, and the International Center of Photography, and has been published in *Art Journal, REFRACT*, The Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, and *The Journal on Images and Culture*. Their work has been exhibited internationally and has recently appeared at El Museo del Barrio in New York (in collaboration with artist Libby Paloma), and Lehner's project *Barbershop: The Art of Queer Failure* will be featured in a solo exhibition at Practice Gallery in Philadelphia in 2021. Lehner holds a Ph.D. in Visual Studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and MFA in Fine Art from California College of the Arts. Lehner is based in New York and teaches at Parsons School of Design, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and the International Center of Photography. Lehner is also available for consultation and speaking engagements related to Queer and Trans inclusivity.

### **About the Authors**

#### BHAUMIK, SITA KURATOMI

Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik is an artist whose work has been called a "joyous political critique." She strikes connections and tells stories of migration and belonging through collaborative projects. South Asian and Japanese Latin American, Sita was born and raised in Los Angeles, Tongva Land, and is based in Oakland, Ohlone Land. She holds a B.A. in Studio Art from Scripps College, an M.F.A. in interdisciplinary art and an M.A. in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts where she currently teaches Critical Ethnic Studies.

She is also a co-founder of People's Kitchen Collective, an organization working at the intersection of art, food, and justice. Sita has been the Scholar in Residence at the Center for Art and Public Life at California College of the Arts, and artist in residence at the Lucas Artist Program at Montalvo and Denniston Hill. She has been an Art Matters Fellow, a Fleishhacker Eureka program fellow, and the recipient of a 2021 Creative Capital Award. She has written on art and sensory perception in many publications including *Multiple Elementary*. Her first book is forthcoming from Kaya Press.

#### IQANI, MEHITA

Mehita Iqani is a Professor in the Media Studies department at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Her research is interdisciplinary, spanning the politics of waste, consumption and inequality, cultural theory, critical discourse analysis, and strategic communications. She is the author of three monographs, most recently *Garbage in Popular Culture: Consumption and the Aesthetics of Waste* (2020, SUNY Press). She is the co-editor of four collections, most recently *Media Studies: Critical African and Decolonial Approaches* (2019, OUP) and *African Luxury: Aesthetics and Politics* (2019, Intellect and University of Chicago Press). She has also published widely in and reviews for key international journals, is Associate Editor of *Consumption Markets and Culture,* and is on the board of *International Journal of Cultural Studies* and *Communication Theory.* Her PhD is in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

#### LEMCKE, RUDY

Rudy Lemcke is a multidisciplinary artist and curator who lives and works in San Francisco, California. He holds a degree in Philosophy from the University of Louvain, Belgium, and a degree in Web Design and Technology from San Francisco State Multimedia Studies Program where he won the Robert Bell outstanding achievement award.

His artwork has been exhibited internationally in galleries and museums, such as the Whitney Museum of American Art; DeYoung Museum, Pacific Film Archive/University Art Museum, Berkeley, California; San Francisco Art Institute/Walter McBean Gallery, SF Camerawork, New Langton Arts, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, University Art Gallery, Stoney Brook University, New York; Grey Art Gallery, New York; Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, Florida; The Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, Louisiana; and Musee D'Art Contemporain de Montreal, Canada.

His work on HIV/AIDS was included in the traveling exhibition *Art, AIDS, America* organized by the Tacoma Art Museum, Washington. His recent writing on HIV/AIDS was published in the Cambridge Scholars anthology *The Shapes of Epidemics and Global Disease (2020).*

His curatorial work includes a trilogy of projects titled *The Turning, Queerly* and includes the exhibitions *From Self to Selfie* (2017), *A History of Violence* (2018), and *Precarious Lives* (2019).

#### REICHERT, RAMÓN

Ramón Reichert (Dr. phil.) currently works as a European project researcher. He is EU-project coordinator of the project *Addressing Violent Radicalisation: A Multiactor Response through Education,* located at the Department Art & Education, Linz. He is program director of the M.Sc. in Data Studies at Danube University Krems, Austria. His research interests include the historiography of media and technology, the impact of new media and communication technologies such as the Internet, social media, visual culture, and identity politics. He is the co-editor of the international journal *Digital Culture & Society*. He is author of *Amateure im Netz* (2008), *Die Macht der Vielen* (2013), *Big Data* (2014), *Sozialmaschine Facebook* (2019), and *Selfies* (2021).

#### SAUERLAENDER, TINA

Tina Sauerlaender is an art historian, curator, speaker, and writer. She focuses on the impact of the digital and the Internet on individual environments and society as well as on virtual reality in visual arts. She is a PhD candidate at University of Art & Design Linz, Austria, Department of Interface Cultures. Her research topic is artistic self-representation in digital art. She is the Director & Head Curator of the independent exhibition platform *peer to space* and has been curating and organizing international group shows since 2010, including *The Unframed World: Virtual Reality as Artistic Medium for the 21st Century* (House of Electronic Arts Basel, 2017). She is Co-Founder of Radiance VR, an international online research platform for VR experiences in visual arts. She has given talks on *Virtual Reality & Art* at re:publica (Berlin), ZKM (Karlsruhe), or New Inc (New York). She is the author of comprehensive texts on contemporary artists, including Taryn Simon, Alicja Kwade, Gregor Hildebrandt, and Carsten Nicolai for *Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst*. She is the Founder of the SALOON, a diverse network of woman identifying art professionals active in a growing number of cities worldwide. She is Artistic Director of the VR ART PRIZE by DKB in Cooperation with CAA Berlin.

#### TASMAN, MARC

Marc Tasman is an Intermedia artist focusing his research-creation on the strengths of social technologies to create meaning in culture. He is director of the interdisciplinary Digital Arts and Culture program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies. Tasman encourages students to look at theories of media and to test them using various innovative, engaging, and practical applications in classes such as Internet Culture, Media Graphics, and Photojournalism. He may be most well known as the "12-year-old Computer Genius from 1984" on YouTube, or from his project *Ten Years and One Day* in which he photographed himself at least once a day, every day for 3,654 consecutive days, from July 24, 1999 through July 24, 2009, using a Polaroid camera and film. Tasman has presented and exhibited throughout the U.S.A, in Canada and Europe, screened work at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and published photographs in the New York Times Digital Edition, The Huffington Post, Mother Jones, and Tablet Magazine.

#### ZELT, NATALIE

Natalie Zelt is a specialist in the history of art of the United States with a focus on photography and critical race and gender studies. She earned her doctorate at the University of Texas, Austin. Zelt has worked independently as a curator for more than a decade, is founding member of the anti-racist feminist collective INGZ, and has worked for institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She is the author of several articles on photography and identity in the United States and her manuscript *Looking and Looking Back: The Photography, Blackness, Family, and Self-Representation in the Work of LaToya Ruby Frazier, Mickalene Thomas, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby* is in development for publication. She is the Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in American Photography at the Rijksmuseum. She currently lives and works in Amsterdam.

**Introduction**
