Vanilla Salvation

Video Performance, 00:07:00
2023

"Vanilla Salvation" takes the "sad girl" online archetype as its subject, a figure closely associated with early Tumblr culture and its highly stylised depictions of women’s melancholy. Unlike earlier representations of women’s suffering, the sad girl figure was self-authored, with women participating in shaping how their own vulnerability was represented. Through a reference to "Rosemary’s Baby", the work considers the tension between self-construction and the conditions that shape what can be authored. The sad girl turns personal suffering into a form of self-expression, but does so through visual conventions already associated with the aestheticisation of women’s suffering. The work approaches these contradictions without adopting a distant critical position, considering what makes certain oppressive models desirable and difficult to abandon.