Sylvie Butler

My work concerns youth culture and the teenage identity. I present photographs, photo collages, and multimedia pieces to depict the outward identities of my friends and peers as well as my own inner monologue. My hope is to allow my audience a glimpse into the teenage psyche, whether that be through the display of our aesthetic sensibilities, or through the expression of my own emotions. In my work as a whole, I initially intend to convey the duality between freedom and dependance that exists in adolescence. My vision for presenting this body of work is to show how rich and nuanced the teenage identity is. I seek to eliminate the glossy, commodified image of teenagers as portrayed by adults in traditional media and by teenagers themselves on social media.

One unconventional aspect of the teenage psyche that I address in my work is fear. One of the larger, more central pieces of my oeuvre is ​Untitled (Nightmare)​, which is based off one of my own nightmares wherein I was trapped in a foreign country. In my analysis of that dream, I concluded that it had arisen as a response to my feeling trapped and overly controlled in my real life. I had a desire to break free from constraint, and that desire is demonstrated through the ink mark making. With ink, there is no room for error. Typically, every mark must be deliberate, as the ink is exceedingly permanent. I challenged myself not to think too much before making marks with the ink. In sweeping strokes I carved out the heads of demons that personify my feelings of fears about navigating the world as I come into my own. I allowed myself to be free with the ink, and in that way I felt I was taking back control over a medium that was intimidating--the very use of the ink in this way was empowering.

The work I have selected for my exhibition is a mixture of photographs, drawings, and multimedia pieces. My photographs are all portraits portraying my friends and broader social circle. I was able to capture the true spirit of my subjects through snapping the photos quickly without giving them time to pose. My photography is meant to reject the increasingly manicured image that I see many of my friends cultivating of themselves on social media.

In considering the arrangement of my exhibition, I sought to arrange my work in a similar way I would on my own walls at home. Rather than having each piece stand on its own, I was interested in the way the works speak to each other as a collective. Thus, I arranged the pieces close together, at times even layered on top of one another in a way that looks like it could have been done half-hazardly. I didn’t want anything to look overly curated, again seeking to reject the hyper stylized appearance of teenagers in the current mediascape. My hope is that this apparently lackadaisical technique develops a relationship with the viewer through triggering a feeling of familiarity or nostalgia for the artistic arrangements of their own teenage bedrooms.