I have only just discovered Leah Schrager’s work but I am absolutely loving it. Although I have seen work attempting to achieve this before I don’t think I have seen anything so interestingly executed. Using social media, websites, interviews and interactions as performance Schrager has curated online personas that interact in spaces that question the differences between performance and reality as well as the power dynamics of sex and sex work.
She both critiques and masters social media as a tool for communication and artistic practice in a way that feels self aware but not judgemental of the medium. Her “Infinity Selfies” and other manipulated nudes use photo editing that emulates the ubiquity of editing apps whilst still referencing an abstraction of the body and composition that asks us to consider further what we are really looking at.
Schrager’s performances as The Naked Therapist engage the public in a conversation about masculinity, loneliness, hook up culture and sex work. Transactional interactions shift and change according to Schrager’s boundaries and again the power dynamics of sex and sexuality are explored, pushed and questioned.
In looking at Schrager’s impressive body of work we can discuss so many interconnected conversations around the blurry line between art and performance, the role this plays in our relationships with social media and porn’s influence on the wider culture. There are themes as well that centre the relationships between sex, intimacy and power within these artworks that can lead us to consider the concept of self objectification as empowerment. A subject that becomes more and more relevant to this broader discussion with time.