Pos(t)ing Online, or the Other Side of the Glass for Looking

Abstract

Let me pose a question: What is at stake when a female artist poses?2 I am certainly not the first to ask this question, central to decades of feminist art-historical revisions and revisitations. But, let me propose that the stakes of posing in the twenty-first century have significantly shifted what it means for the female artist to produce and consume images of herself. In our contemporary existence, filled with images, chats, and deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence (AI), as well as an ever-expanding blur between online and offline (or away from keyboard [AFK]) worlds, the screen has become the ultimate mediator; it is the looking glass (or “glass for looking,” as named by Joanna Walsh) that prompts us, like Alice, to wonder what wonderland lies beyond.3 In wondering what is at stake when a female artist poses, we also have to ask what is at stake when we consume these images online through a screen. For to pose online is, in a sense, to post, and posing and posting propose a whole new set of questions in regard to the production and consumption of female bodies.