I was mindlessly scrolling through my Instagram explore feed earlier this week, shamefully acknowledging that there are many things I could be doing that would be more stimulating. As my eyes glazed over from the endless stream of bronzed 20-something White women posed against the cerulean-blue seas of Tulum, I noticed a photo of Martine Syms’ show at Sadie Coles HQ, perfectly contained within the confines of the 1:1 ratio Instagram is known for. I double tapped the photo and bookmarked it as I have done countless times before, knowing that it might disappear into Instagram’s endless abyss of images.
Installation view, Martine Syms, “Grand Calme” at Sadie Coles HQ
I had decided that it would be beneficial for me to venture outside and attempt to face the anxieties that I am often crippled by. I remembered the image I had bookmarked earlier in the week, and my decision for the day was to turn the Instagram-curated experience, often unattainable behind the LED screens we carry in our hands, into a lived one that I could physically interact with.
Walking into the gallery, I had become fully immersed in the anxiety-ridden, chaotic mind of Martine Syms. Questions of self-worth, dwellings on the failures of past relationships, and desires for the body to be praised are all plastered on the walls in what Syms calls a visual threat map—a digital diagram of potential threats in a software system, which in this case, is Syms’ mind. I was not quite sure where I was supposed to start exploring this visual threat map, and in a way I was okay with that. The lack of sequence in Syms’ internal dialogue is an accurate depiction of the thoughts I have on a daily basis—some leading to binary answers, some splintering off into other questions, some leading to nothing, and all with origins I cannot trace.
“Am I getting fat?”
—> If “yes” —> /end
—> If “no” —> Then “I’m fiiiiiiiiiine”.
Interlaced within this map are blown up, pixelated images of everyday objects and people—things we see or interact with but don’t really remember, often as a byproduct of letting our thoughts consume us. As I slowly paced the perimeter of the gallery, I was reminded of the Cosmopolitan quizzes I used to take when I was a teenager, the ones where you add up how many times you had chosen a certain letter (A, B, or C) which corresponded with a longer answer. This time, no matter what letter I chose, I would always receive the same answer: I am living in an endless script of uncertainty and self-doubt.
Amazon Data Storage Units
Installation view of “Grand Calme”, Martine Syms, 2018, Sadie Coles HQ. Image courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ.
As I returned to the entrance of the gallery, I sat down on one of the many chairs constructed using neon polyester straps, each emblazoned with the names of recreational drugs or snippets of queries that were embedded in the threat map around me. The unmissable focal work of “Grand Calme,” MYTHICCBEING (2017), stands towering over me. Built using industrial-grade metal and thousands of LED bulbs, it had only a handful of exposed wires perfectly arranged and tied down to the metal frame. It presented itself as an empty, standalone data-storage unit, similar to those Amazon uses to host its’ users 3 trillion+ “objects”. What plays on this huge screen is an amalgamation of the footprints of Syms’ digital existence—unsteady throwaway iPhone videos; found Google search images; text chat snippets from herself to herself; text chat snippets from herself to her ex; and voice overs of all the insecurities Syms thinks but never says out loud. It was as if Syms were flipping to a page in her diary and reading out a sentence to us.
The only break I had from the anxiety-overload of different forms of digital communication was an AI duplicate of Syms going through the same types of motions you might see when creating a character on the popular computer game, The Sims. Her AI replica awkwardly shuffles her feet, dances in place, sighs, and occasionally pulls faces as if to test the facial recognition software she’s using. After a brief pause in the onslaught of digital media, a message appears in simple black text: “TEXT ME - 07449 896452.” I attempted to text the number several times, only to receive an error message in response. Out of the corner of my eye I saw in bold font on the wall “I can’t even get a text back.” Frustrated, I closed my messenger app and snapped a few photos of the exhibition before I left—a digital and physical reminder of all of the anxieties that inhabit Syms’ mind, and from experience, mine as well.
When I returned home, I carefully edited one of the photos I had taken of Syms’ internal psyche. As I entered the title of the exhibition into the description field on Instagram, I became fully aware that although the title was “Grand Calme” the experience within it was anything but. Syms very accurately depicts the weaknesses we have within our own modes of thinking, providing us with a space to acknowledge our anxieties in a world where social media depicts only successes, pointing the camera at the unseen realities of life dominated by the curated digital appearance. As I prepared to upload my photo on Instagram, I went through my own internal threat map with a dialogue not unlike the one I had just immersed myself in:
“Does this look stupid?”
—> If “yes” —> /end
—> If “no” —> Then “I’m fiiiiiiiiiine”.