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Molly Soda

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Molly Soda
Born
San Juan, Puerto Rico
NationalityAmerican
OccupationArtist
MovementVideo art,performance art,photography,new media art,Post-Internet

Amalia Soto,known asMolly Soda,is a Brooklyn-based internetperformance artist.[1]Soda works across a variety of digital platforms, producingselfiesvideos,GIFs,zines,and web-basedperformance art,which are presented both online and in gallery installations in a variety of forms.[2]Molly Soda's work explores the technological mediation ofself-concept,contemporaryfeminism,cyberfeminism,mass media and popular social media culture.[3]Molly Soda is the co-editor withArvida Byströmof the 2017 bookPics or It Didn't Happen: Images Banned from Instagram.[4][5][6]

Biography

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Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Molly Soda grew up inBloomington, Indiana.Soda studied photography and ImagingTisch School of the Artsin New York City, graduating with a BFA in 2011.[7]Soda cites performance artists such asMarina AbramovićandCarolee Schneemanas artistic influences.[8]Since 2011, Molly Soda has worked out of Chicago, Detroit and New York.

Celebrity

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Molly Soda started blogging as a teenager.[9]In the late 2000s, herTumblrblog began to attract attention beyond the Tumblr sphere, gaining notoriety on the site and on wider social media platforms. She became an iconicmicro-celebrity,known for teen confessions-style art and for her widely imitated personal aesthetic in multiple online subcultures.[10]In 2011, she was involved in the emergence ofseapunkmicroculture,[11]and became an occasional back-up dancer for techno-pop musicianGrimes.[12]

Work

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Molly Soda was first recognized for her college senior thesis,Tween Dreams,[13]The work is aYouTubevideo series, later released on VHS, about a group of preteen friends growing up in the suburbs and living the drama of high school dances, chatroom fights, and meeting boys at the mall in the 2000s. Soda was the only actress in the work and played every character.[14]

Soda's 2013 webcam videoInbox Fullwas presented at the Tumblr digital art auction organized by curatorLindsay Howard.Inbox Fullis a ten-hour-long endurance performance and video piece, "in which she dictates every absurd message in her Tumblr inbox. Her transparent self-presentation is refreshing amongst tediously-curated online personalities".[15][16][17]

In 2015, as part of an ongoing art project,Should I Send This?,Molly Soda leaked her own nude selfies, expressing that "Women SHOULD be feeling themselves…SHOULD be taking control of the way they are represented in media/art by photographing themselves".[18]

Soda'sVirtual Spellbook(2015) on the internet platformNewHiveaddresses agency within technology at the same time as making fun of the traditionally female perspective ofWicca,[19]by providing a series of interactive spells to deal with technology.[20]

In her 2015 work,From My Bedroom to Yours,Soda combined Tumblr aesthetic, kitsch and internet culture within a confessional space that reflected her own bedroom/studio to demonstrate her vulnerability.[21]Soda designed the gallery to look like a private space, treating a physical gallery space differently than her on line presence, as if people somehow take things more seriously in real life.[22]WithFrom My Bedroom to Yours,Soda "combined 'tween Tumblr aesthetic', kitsch and 'lowbrow internet culture' with a kind of 'unmade-but-made confessionalism' to create intimacy through the recreation of Soda's own bedroom within the walls of the gallery".

Molly Soda has exhibited both in the United States and Internationally with solo exhibitions in New York (Jack Barrett), Los Angeles (Leiminspace), Bloomington (Breezeway Gallery) and London, England (Annka Kultys Gallery).[23]Molly Soda, in an augmented reality project in collaboration with Nicole Ruggiero and the Berlin collectiveRefrakt,was awarded the 2017Lumen Founders' Prize.[24]

See also

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References

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  1. ^Ables, Kelsey (May 13, 2020). "Art that pops off your computer screen".The Washington Post.
  2. ^"Narcissistic, Maybe. But Is There More To The Art Of The Selfie?".NPR.org.RetrievedNovember 6,2021.
  3. ^Kelsey, Colleen (April 10, 2020)."We're Quarantining at Molly Soda's House".PAPER.RetrievedNovember 6,2021.
  4. ^Annie, Felix (March 15, 2017)."NSFW: Check Out Arvida Byström and Molly Soda's Collection of Banned Instagram Photos".PAPER.RetrievedNovember 6,2021.
  5. ^"Molly Soda, Digital Performance Artist | American Masters | PBS".American Masters.December 20, 2017.RetrievedNovember 6,2021.
  6. ^Molly Soda and Arvida Bystroem, eds. (2017)Pics or It Didn't Happen: Images Banned From InstagramLondon: PrestelISBN3791383078
  7. ^"DPI Alum Molly Soda Presents at Hasselblad".tisch.nyu.edu.RetrievedNovember 6,2021.
  8. ^Pearce, Victoria."INTERVIEW WITH THE SELF-CONFESSED 'WEBCAM PRINCESS', MOLLY SODASpindle".Archived fromthe originalon November 17, 2016.RetrievedOctober 21,2017.
  9. ^Mosey, Alice (April 9, 2015)."The digital artist who's dating a teddy bear".Dazed.RetrievedNovember 6,2021.
  10. ^Marshall, P. David, Redmond, SeanA Companion to Celebrity,2015, John Wiley & Sons, p. 339
  11. ^Raymer, Miles (January 12, 2012)."The week seapunk broke".Chicago Reader.RetrievedNovember 6,2021.
  12. ^Fishman, Elly (July 16, 2012)."Pitchfork 2012: Best and Worst of the Festival".Chicago magazine.Archivedfrom the original on July 21, 2012.RetrievedOctober 5,2021.
  13. ^"No Gallery? No Problem: 9 Millennial Art Strategies That Are Shaping the Future of Contemporary Art".Artnet News.September 18, 2018.RetrievedNovember 6,2021.
  14. ^James-Wilson, Matthew (April 30, 2017)."Molly Soda,Forge".RetrievedOctober 20,2017.
  15. ^Cheng, Susan."The Most Important Artists of 2013".Complex.RetrievedNovember 6,2021.
  16. ^Rosenbohm, Randon."Alone with Molly Soda".Archivedfrom the original on March 7, 2017.RetrievedOctober 19,2017.
  17. ^"Paddle8".Archived fromthe originalon November 6, 2013.RetrievedOctober 19,2017.
  18. ^Mosey, Alice (June 17, 2015)."Molly Soda silences the haters".Dazed.RetrievedNovember 6,2021.
  19. ^Newell-Hanson, Alice; Hines, Alice (July 28, 2015)."Molly soda's internet spellbook can help you stop insta stalking your exi-D".RetrievedOctober 21,2017.
  20. ^Rose DeFabio, Cara (July 26, 2015)."Want to banish trolls? A digital artist wrote a 'spellbook' for the InternetSplinter".RetrievedOctober 21,2017.
  21. ^"Molly Soda: From My Bedroom To Yours @ Annka Kulty's Gallery – Eastlondonlines".eastlondonlines.co.uk.RetrievedNovember 6,2021.
  22. ^Loftus, Jamie (September 6, 2016)."OG Digital Artist Molly Soda Is Not The Face of Cyber-Feminism".Inverse.RetrievedNovember 6,2021.
  23. ^"Annka Kultys Gallery bio".November 16, 2015.RetrievedOctober 19,2017.
  24. ^"Lumen Prize".Archived fromthe originalon August 13, 2017.RetrievedOctober 19,2017.
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