"Miami is hyper-sexualized and sensationalized, it leaves intense aesthetic and psychological scars on any reasonable person who grows up here," Jillian Mayer told New Times back in 2012. "To me, the only thing that ends up seeming reasonable among the madness is realizing that it's all entertainment."
Exploring those scars and human transformation in a technology-ruled world have been present in much of Mayer's work over the years, from viral videos to local gallery showings. The Miami native's latest exhibition, "400 Nudes," hits especially close to home -- we are undeniably obsessed with taking selfies, after all. But the lack of identity in nude selfies is what inspired Mayer's massive NSFW collection, in which Mayer Photoshopped her face onto hundreds of faceless naked photos floating around the Internet.
See also: Watch Jillian Mayer's "MegaMega Upload," From Borscht's Sundance Selection #PostModem
Recent Internet hacks and nude celebrity photo leaks led Mayer to explore more about nude selfies, why they're so frequently created, and women's motives for sharing them.
"I started doing a lot of reading about them and I found a website giving tips to young girls for taking nude selfies. The tip that I found most interesting was to not show your face. Basically, that you should strip your nude body of its identity and send it to someone you want to sexualize you," she told the Huffington Post. "I thought that's interesting and funny but also really terrible. Obviously they're trying to protect young girls with this article, but it's also preparing them for the fact that they will be betrayed."
Mayer searched the web for a selection of women, getting photos from revenge porn websites, Tumblr, Google Images, and Reddit. She created a website, 400nudes.com, as a bank for her doctored portraits to then circulate the Internet and mix with existing nude photos. Some of the photo manipulation is seamless, while other images contain choppy, warped versions of Mayer's face.
The work, on exhibit until April 1, 2015 at Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, also examines the photographers' simultaneous need to both protect and expose and themselves.
"When I started thinking about the future of online nude self portraiture, it got me thinking: we're telling these people to cut their heads off, to decapitate themselves, because they will be betrayed. In the future this advice could turn into: if you're going to send someone a naked photo of yourself, maybe you should consider sending a bulk of many bodies -- that way the authenticity is already addressed as an issue. Or photoshopping the body in certain ways, distorting the body so it's not actually you. Does authenticity matter in identity? That's what I find most interesting."
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