Danielle Fernandez
Inter@ctions, 2021
digital drawings, glossy poster paper
30 x 20
Feed, 2020
acrylic on panel
12 x 12
About "Feed" and "Inter@ctions"
Taking my two favorite musicians as my muses, I created two series, Feed and Inter@ctions, to explore the social media habits of fans as well as the interactions between fan and artist through social media posts.
Feed visualizes the concept of the scroll: the blurring and distortion of an image that appears on your device for a mere moment, only to be swiped up and away by your absentminded thumb. If asked to recall that image, one may recall the colors or the pose of the figure, but it’s all a blur. No matter how long a user spends curating the perfect image to post, many images scattered across social media feeds everywhere will go unnoticed and forgotten a quick swipe later. Even users with thousands or millions of followers, those who have been deemed influencers, have posts that get scrolled past every day. Followers may double-tap to like or briefly enter the comment section, but posts in feeds are fleeting moments. This series captures the essence of these fleeting moments scrolling through a feed. Each panel contains a digital drawing inspired by an image posted online by either Poppy or Haley Dahl. These images became further abstracted through the image transfer process and the addition of streaks of acrylic paint. Each panel was inspired by a digital post that became transformed into a unique physical art object but still remained confined to the same square shape it would appear within on Instagram.
Inter@ctions directly contrasts the type of behavior highlighted in Feed by taking a moment to sit with a single post. Rather than dragging out colors, the color palette has been reduced to monochrome. Lines are more graphic and less painterly but still maintain some qualities of a hand-drawn piece. Each digital drawing was inspired by a screenshot from Instagram, incorporating identifiable iconography and visual elements from the platform. They act as frozen moments in time, authentically capturing the numbers of likes and comments from the moments my screenshots were taken. Even the frames that the prints have been placed in were chosen thoughtfully as their curved corners make each framed poster reminiscent of the screen of a smartphone. Silhouettes, limited details, and repetition of forms come together to reimagine content from these posts as unique compositions. Each artist is represented in this series by two posters inspired by posts on their popular main accounts as well as two posters inspired by posts on lesser known but still public side accounts for a total of 8 posters.
About Danielle
Danielle Fernandez is an artist from Sudbury, Massachusetts. She has created art across disciplines including printmaking, painting, drawing, sculpture, and digital art. Previously, she has used her art as a way to explore concepts such as injecting character and personality into non-human creatures and things, exploring symbolism and relationships between people, animals, and objects, and even illustrating the joy and turmoil that can arise from interpersonal relationships. Much of her work has been described as playful and dreamlike, often having a hazy quality to it and incorporating elements of humor or pop surrealism. She’s also explored how one's understanding and portrayal of their own self-image can alter others’ perceptions of who they are and how these traits can be illustrated through figure drawing. She transfers memories and nostalgia into her sculptural work through the incorporation of found and personal objects such as paper receipts, objects from her childhood, and even bits of nature from her backyard. Her two passions growing up have always been creative writing and art and she prides herself on her art’s ability to tell stories without the need for words. She is currently studying art at Ithaca College on the BFA degree track.