Sometimes I like to imagine what researchers will discover of our culture 1000 years from now…maybe nothing, because our hard drives will have wiped long ago. But maybe the descendent of the Internet will carry traces of our past selves, and in some distant university, selfies will be displayed in front of students as a demonstration of our era’s desperate and obnoxious need for image control. How will this reflect on who we were? Call me a pessimist, but I think it will make us look like insecure, vapid people, too busy capturing our “best angle” in the bathroom mirror to look around us at the real world, too busy scrolling through social media feeds to interact with the people in our physical presence. Mothmeister, an artist duo from Belgium, apparently feel the same way, because they cite “the dominant exhibitionism of the selfie culture” as one of the inspirations behind their brilliant series of monster portraits, which they publish to their Instagram gallery. Each portrait features a grotesque and eerie interaction between a monster-like creature and their taxidermy animal. The animal is often dressed and decorated in a similar way to Walter Potter’s creatures, an intentional likeness on Mothmeister’s part – they are avid taxidermists. The portraits they create are at once creepy and stunning, and carry a vast depth and meaning to them – anti-selfies, if you will. You can follow their Instagram feed here to see all of the portraits they have crafted to date, pick up prints and postcards from their shop here, and see some of my favorites below…
Images via BoredPanda
