Abstract:
This thesis focuses on a decade of contemporary art practice that begins in 2007, corresponding with
the rise of mobile internet technologies. It surveys a vast and evolving techno-cultural landscape
through the work of artists whose practices engaged with social media, video sharing platforms,
virtual worlds, gaming and indigenous applications. In particular, it examines the trope of the extimate
avatar in contemporary art in relation to artists who draw on the potential and materiality of digital
platforms and online applications. These digital platforms and online technologies that gave rise to the
trope of the extimate avatar have collectively contributed to the perception and practice of selfhood in
the age of extimacy, where the distinctions between what is accessible intimate, public and private is
increasingly fluid.
The concept of extimacy or intimate exteriorities is central to this thesis. Extimacy or extimité
(extimacy) is a neologism coined by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to theorize the psychic
interrelation between interior and exterior. Throughout this thesis Lacan’s work is referenced
alongside other scholars who expanded on the concept of extimacy to problematize and transcend
the distinction between interiorities and exteriorities. Drawing on definitions of extimacy as practices of
extroversion and self-disclosure that illustrate the non-distinction of intimate and exterior, this thesis
proposes the trope of the ‘extimate avatar’ that enables representational and relational experiences of
identities.
To explore the materiality digital platforms and online technologies and the trope of the extimate
avatar and how this has informed and influenced the work of contemporary artists, this thesis
discusses works by Janet Lilo, Erica Scourti, Oliver Laric, Amie Siegel, Natalie Bookchin, Cao Fei,
Eva and Franco Mattes, Alan Kwan, Feng Mengbo, Momo Pixel, Skawennati, Rachael Rakena, and
Leah King-Smith.
