Jillian Mayer, an artist from South Florida, uses her art to address the effect that technology has on an internet dependent society.
Mayer is a performance artist. She uses herself or others to interact with or create works of art.
In her Thursday night discussion at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, Mayer discussed many pieces, including her videos, “Makeup Tutorial – How to Hide from Cameras,” “Day Off” and her viral video “I Am Your Grandma.”
Mayer said she likes making videos because it combines many forms of art into one. All of these videos comment on technology in a creative and unconventional way.
“It wasn’t my intention to become a performance artist … I was just making things,” Mayer said. “I wasn’t a formalist trying to only explore only one medium. I was just trying to search for something that could express whatever idea at the time needed to be expressed.”
These works have been displayed all around the world, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, North Miami, Bellevue Arts Museum in Washington, Bass Museum in Florida and many Guggenheim museums all over the world. Her films have been screened at Sundance, SXSW and the New York Film Festival.
Video isn’t the only medium that Mayer has explored. To name a few, she created a mural, “My Phone Died. Meet Me Here” in 2015, a series of self-portraits in 2013 and recently has created Slumpies.
Slumpies are sculptures that require human interaction, Mayer said. They are formed in a way that relieves the user of pressure on their neck while scrolling through their phone. Slumpies come with arm rests and neck rests to alleviate the sometimes uncomfortable action of bending over a phone for hours at a time.
It is works such as these that offer a tongue-in-cheek critique of the world of technology, Mayer said. The audience laughed along to the comical commentaries in Mayer’s work, though there is a clear age gap in the responses to her art. While the audience at the discussion had a very wide age range, from age 19 and up, Mayer admits that there is a change in responses based on age.
“I think my audience falls off with older crowds.” Mayer said. “But, when they’re presented with the work they tend to generally resonate with some of the more sincere parts of it …there are different takes on everything.”
Mayer is able to make original works while creating a social commentary that can resonate with an audience. Some of her videos will be on display as a part of the “Camera Lucida” exhibition in the Jule Collins Smith Museum for the rest of the semester.
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