The Selfie and the Self, 2016

Alvaro Urbano’s (or) Petrit Halilaj’s drawing adds a particularly revealing layer of interpretation: Both artists claim full authorship.

As physical representation has been lost in the meantime, this perky double-self exist only in the form of its digital documentation, and its representation in the two artists’ differing yet coexisting account of its genesis. The selfie is a version of the self that from a mythical-virtual perspective is and is more than the self, in a realm that the self, due to its still prevailing but inevitably dissolving attachment to the physical body cannot yet permeate. Referring back to Alberti’s reading of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, your selfie, as a product of interpretation and editing, deserves more love than your self.

Petrit Halilaj & Alvaro Urbano, The Selfie and the Self, 2016. Wallpaper; dimensions variable.