Living Room Extravaganza - Selfie
Post-painting
Circa 2026
Three people hold up their phones. They’re dressed for the office, or for drinks after work, a blazer here and a good haircut there. Over their shoulders the horizon is burning: smoke rising in columns, fires flickering along the skyline, fighter jets crossing the sky in formation. It’s the most dramatic backdrop any of them will ever have, and they’ve turned their backs on it to get it into the shot.
The phones point back at them. Nobody is recording the catastrophe. They’re recording themselves in front of it, and in doing so their faces have started to come apart, smeared and crusted over, as if the act of looking at themselves were eating them away. The more they record, the less of them is left.
Selfie is a portrait of the age of witness without witnessing. War has become location content, one more view to stand in front of, and the burning city is reduced to the setting for a personal brand. The painting reverses the old question about what we see when we look at suffering. Here nobody looks at it. The jets fly over a crowd of the self-absorbed, and the only thing in focus is the screen.
