Artificial identities – 31 positions

Cindy Sherman (USA, b. 1954)

The grande dame of staged identity: since the Untitled Film Stills (1977–1980), Sherman has slipped into invented characters – film divas, society ladies, clowns – exposing the cultural codes of femininity and star images. In 2017 she made her private Instagram account public and used Facetune, Perfect365 and YouCam Makeup for grotesquely distorted digital self-portraits that ironically cast her as the “queen of selfies” – without ever taking a selfie in the usual sense. For W Magazine she created a series imitating the social media “plandid”, the staged-looking snapshot.

Key works: Untitled Film Stills (1977–1980), Centerfolds (1981), Instagram portraits (from 2017), plandid series for W
Exhibitions: retrospectives incl. Tate Modern, Fondation Louis Vuitton; joint exhibition with Morimura at M+ Hong Kong (2024/25)
Sources: W Magazine · New York Times · Hyperallergic · M+ Hong Kong · Instagram: @cindysherman

Yasumasa Morimura (Japan, b. 1951)

The Osaka master of transformation uses make-up, costume and digital editing to become Western icons – Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Madonna, Greta Garbo – questioning the constructedness of celebrity and the history of Western image consumption in Japan. His One Hundred M’s Self-portraits (1993–2000) show him as an entire gallery of famous people, Cindy Sherman included.

Key works: Doublonnage (1987–88), One Hundred M’s Self-portraits (1993–2000), Actress Series
Exhibitions: “Yasumasa Morimura and Cindy Sherman: Masquerades”, M+ Hong Kong (from 14 December 2024); Carnegie Museum of Art
Sources: M+ Hong Kong · Carnegie Museums · Britannica

Samuel Fosso (Cameroon/Nigeria, b. 1962)

In the 1970s Fosso began 70’s Lifestyle, using leftover film for imaginative self-portraits made in his studio in Bangui. His later work turns him into icon after icon: in African Spirits (2008), 14 large-format self-portraits, he embodies Angela Davis, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Patrice Lumumba and others – homages that also ask about individuality, celebrity, media and the history of representation.

Key works: 70’s Lifestyle (1975–78), African Spirits (2008), Emperor of Africa (2013), SIXSIXSIX (2015, 666 Polaroids)
Exhibitions: “Samuel Fosso: African Spirits”, Menil Collection, Houston (2022/23); retrospectives incl. Maison Européenne de la Photographie
Sources: Menil Collection · Vogue · 1854 Photography · Berlin Art Week

Tomoko Sawada (Japan, b. 1977)

Sawada examines how far identity is shaped by convention: for ID400 (1998–2001) she photographed herself 400 times in a photo booth, with changing make-up, hair and expression. OMIAI♡ (2001) refers to the photo booklets of arranged-marriage agencies, Cover/Face (2002–03) to Japanese ideals of youth and beauty up to the ganguro look. In School Days (2004) she digitally inserts herself as every pupil and the teacher of a class.

Key works: ID400 (1998–2001), OMIAI♡ (2001), Cover/Face (2002–03), School Days (2004)
Sources: Wikipedia · The Photographers’ Gallery · maifeminism · Instagram: @tomokosawada_artist

Nikki S. Lee (South Korea/USA, b. 1970)

For her Projects (1997–2001), Lee spent months immersed in groups and subcultures – the Hispanic community, yuppies, drag queens, tourists – and had members photograph her as one of them. The results are seemingly banal snapshots that reveal identity as performative, appropriable and changeable (“Changing myself is part of my identity”). Lee is seen as a forerunner of the identity play of the social media era.

Key works: The Projects (1997–2001), incl. The Skaters Project, The Hispanic Project; Parts (2002–05)
Sources: National Museum of Women in the Arts · Guggenheim (teaching materials) · Wikipedia

Joan Fontcuberta (Spain, b. 1955)

The Barcelona conceptual photographer invents entire archives to undermine the credibility of photography. For Sputnik (1997) he fabricated evidence of the fictional cosmonaut Ivan Istochnikov – his own name rendered in Russian – who supposedly vanished with Soyuz 2 in 1968, complete with portraits bearing Fontcuberta’s face. A deepfake aesthetic avant la lettre that was repeatedly taken for real. More in the essay Joan Fontcuberta – Photography, Truth and AI.

Key works: Fauna (1987), Sputnik (1997), Hemograms (1998)
Sources: Wikipedia · Harvard Art Museums · Instagram: @joanfontcuberta_

Alison Jackson (UK)

Jackson stages photorealistic pseudo-paparazzi images with lookalikes: Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed with an invented child (1999), Tony Blair and George W. Bush in private situations, the royal family behind closed doors. Her images negotiate how much “truth” the public is willing to believe and are now seen as analogue deepfakes of celebrity culture. She received the Infinity Award of the International Center of Photography.

Key works: Private (book, 2003), Diana/Dodi series (1999), ongoing lookalike series on politics and royalty
Sources: International Center of Photography · The Independent · Official website · Instagram: @alisonjacksonartist

Richard Prince (USA, b. 1949) – “New Portraits”

Prince’s Instagram appropriation is the dispute over image rights and self-presentation turned into a work: he took other people’s Instagram posts, added his own comment, enlarged the screenshots onto canvas and sold them at Gagosian for around 90,000 US dollars – shown at Gagosian (“New Portraits”, 2014; another exhibition in Beverly Hills, 2020) and at Frieze New York. Legal disputes with photographers and the response of the SuicideGirls, who sold the same images themselves for 90 dollars, made the work a flashpoint for the question of who owns a self-image online.

Key works: New Portraits (2014–2020), Canal Zone
Galleries: Gagosian (New York, Beverly Hills)
Sources: Vulture · Gagosian · Gagosian (exhibition PDF)

Nancy Burson (USA, b. 1948)

A pioneer of digital face manipulation: from the 1980s, working with MIT developers, Burson created morphing software that aged and merged faces – a technique later used to age-progress images of missing and abducted children. Her Human Race Machine let viewers see themselves with the features of other ethnicities; her composite portraits, for instance of several famous film faces, fundamentally question the photographic truth of the face. A direct historical root of today’s face-swap and deepfake technology.

Key works: Aging Machine (1980s), composite portraits, Human Race Machine (around 2000)
Sources: Truth in Photography · Kate Vass Galerie · Right Click Save · Instagram: @nancyburson

Chino Otsuka (Japan/UK)

Otsuka digitally inserts herself into her own childhood: in Imagine Finding Me (2005–2009) her adult self stands beside her child self in old family photographs – a poetic negotiation of time, memory and the construction of the self. The video works Memoriography (2009/10) let the young Otsuka fade into the older one.

Key works: Imagine Finding Me (2005–09), Memoriography I/II (2009/10)
Sources: LensCulture · Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation · CNET · Official website

Amalia Ulman (Argentina/USA, b. 1989) – “Excellences & Perfections”

The Instagram performance that entered art history: from 19 April 2014, Ulman staged on her account a five-month fictional transformation from “cute girl” to “sugar baby” to “life goddess” – including a faked breast augmentation and a makeover storyline. Thousands of followers took the character for real. New Museum and Rhizome showed the work in their First Look series, Tate Modern in “Performing for the Camera” (2016). Its core theme: lifestyle branding and the repetition of privileged codes of self-presentation.

Key works: Excellences & Perfections (2014), Privilege (2018)
Sources: BBC · CNN · New Museum Archive · Tate Modern · Interview Magazine · Instagram: @amaliaulman

LaTurbo Avedon (online since 2008)

A purely online persona: avatar, artist and curator in one, with no publicly known physical counterpart. The work addresses non-physical identity and authorship; Avedon curated the online gallery Panther Modern and builds virtual spaces on platforms from Second Life to Fortnite. Exhibitions include the Whitney Museum, Barbican, MAK Vienna and Manchester International Festival.

Key works: Panther Modern (online gallery), Your Progress Will Be Saved, installations in virtual worlds
Sources: Official website · Whitney Museum · Wikipedia · Instagram: @laturbo

Lu Yang (China/Japan, b. 1984)

Lu Yang’s central figure is DOKU, an androgynous digital alter ego named after a Buddhist idea that one is born alone and dies alone. DOKU appears as the artist’s “digital reincarnation” – in video installations, as a projection in Times Square and in virtual worlds – and travels through the six realms of rebirth. The work addresses the disembodiment of the self, gender fluidity and the boundary between avatar and human.

Key works: Uterus Man (2013), Lu Yang Delusional Mandala (2015), DOKU: Digital Alaya (2021), DOKU the Self (2022), DOKU: Digital Reincarnation (2023)
Galleries/exhibitions: Société Berlin; Fondation Louis Vuitton (2024); Times Square Arts
Sources: Société Berlin · Times Square Arts · Observer · Jane Lombard Gallery · Instagram: @luyangasia

Sondra Perry (USA, b. 1986)

Perry works with 3D avatars of her own body and face, their skin rendered in chroma-key blue, to examine the construction of Blackness in digital space. In Graft and Ash for a Three-Monitor Workstation (2016) the viewer sits on an exercise bike in front of three screens on which Perry’s avatar speaks of the exhaustion that being Black in the USA entails. Her work is a central reference for the politics of the avatar body.

Key works: Lineage for a Multiple-Monitor Workstation (2015), Graft and Ash for a Three-Monitor Workstation (2016), Typhoon Coming On (2018)
Sources: MoMA · Whitney Museum · Electronic Arts Intermix · Instagram: @sondraperry02

Hito Steyerl (Germany, b. 1966)

Steyerl’s videos and installations examine how people themselves become images in the image economy. In How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (2013) she gives ironic “instructions” for becoming invisible in a world of total visibility – from vanishing into the pixel to drowning in the flood of images. With essays such as “In Defense of the Poor Image” and installations such as Factory of the Sun (2015), she is one of the most important voices on the digital image between theory and practice.

Key works: November (2004), How Not to Be Seen (2013), Factory of the Sun (2015)
Sources: MoMA · New York Times · Instagram: @hito_steyerl

Martine Syms (USA, b. 1988)

Syms explores the gap between lived experience and its representation – from the video series Lessons, short clips in the style of Instagram stories, to The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto (2013). In exhibitions such as Fact & Trouble (ICA London, 2016) she takes apart how Blackness and femininity are coded in media, from the sitcom to the selfie.

Key works: The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto (2013), Lessons (from 2015), Incense Sweaters & Ice (2017)
Sources: Studio International · The Art Newspaper · MoMA Projects 106 · Instagram: @martinesyms

Molly Soda & Arvida Byström (USA/Sweden) – “Pics or It Didn’t Happen”

In their book (Prestel, 2017), Soda and Byström collected hundreds of images Instagram had deleted – selfies with body hair, menstrual blood, female nipples – documenting the platform’s censorship of self-presentation. The book is archive and manifesto at once: what Instagram will not tolerate in bodies determines who may show themselves, and how.

Key works: Pics or It Didn’t Happen: Images Banned from Instagram (Prestel, 2017); solo works by Molly Soda, incl. Inbox Performance
Sources: The Independent · South China Morning Post · Instagram: @mollysoda · @arvidabystrom

Zach Blas (USA) – “Facial Weaponization Suite”

Blas’ series (2011–14) is a classic of resistance to facial recognition: in workshops he scanned participants’ faces and merged them into collective, amorphous masks that biometric systems cannot read as faces. The Fag Face Mask (2012) responds to studies claiming to “detect” sexual orientation from facial features – an early artistic intervention against the reading of traits by AI.

Key works: Facial Weaponization Suite (2011–14), Fag Face Mask (2012)
Sources: Official website · Essay (Althoff, transcript Verlag)

Heather Dewey-Hagborg (USA) – “Stranger Visions”

From discarded chewing gum, cigarette butts and hair, Dewey-Hagborg extracted DNA and had software compute faces, which she exhibited as 3D-printed portraits of the unknown “donors” – likenesses of people who never consented. The project (2012–14) made the looming biological surveillance of forensic DNA phenotyping physically tangible.

Key work: Stranger Visions (2012–14)
Sources: Official project page · CNN · Popular Science · Instagram: @hdeweyh

Trevor Paglen & Kate Crawford – “ImageNet Roulette”

Launched in 2019, the web application matched uploaded selfies to the person categories of the ImageNet dataset – labelling people as “nerd”, “wrongdoer” or with racist and misogynist terms. This automated labelling made the biases in training data tangible on a mass scale and sparked a worldwide debate. The theoretical background is provided by Crawford and Paglen’s essay Excavating AI.

Key works: ImageNet Roulette (2019), Excavating AI (essay, 2019)
Sources: Paglen Studio · New York Times · Berkeley BCNM · Instagram: @trevorpaglen

Bill Posters & Daniel Howe – “Spectre” / “Big Dada”

In June 2019 the artists posted AI-generated deepfake videos on Instagram, among them a Mark Zuckerberg boasting of control over “billions of people’s stolen data”, as well as deepfakes of Kim Kardashian, Marina Abramović and Morgan Freeman. The Big Dada series, part of the installation Spectre (incl. Sheffield Doc/Fest), forced Facebook and Instagram to state their policy on deepfakes.

Key works: Big Dada (2019), Spectre (installation, 2019)
Sources: Bill Posters · CBS News · Mother Jones · BBC · Instagram: @bill_posters_uk · @danyelhau

Leo Selvaggio (USA) – “URME Surveillance”

Selvaggio had his own face 3D-printed as a photorealistic mask: whoever wears it is registered by surveillance cameras as Selvaggio – identity becomes a shared object. Extended by a paper mask and a video encryptor that replaces faces in videos with his, the project (from 2014) asks who owns a face in the biometric age.

Key works: URME Surveillance Identity Prosthetic (2014), URME Paper Mask, URME Facial Video Encryptor
Sources: Official project page · Security Today · Journal article (Taylor & Francis) · Instagram: @leoselva

Douglas Coupland (Canada, b. 1961) – “Deep Face”

The author of Generation X paints over magazine portrait photos with blocks of colour in Deep Face (2015), so that facial recognition can no longer register them – an analogue act of becoming invisible before digital identification. Shown in the exhibition Bit Rot (Witte de With, Rotterdam, 2015), together with his Slogans for the 21st Century.

Key works: Deep Face (2015), Slogans for the 21st Century (from 2011)
Sources: Frieze · Wikipedia · Art Viewer · Instagram: @douglascoupland

Anthony Cerniello – “Danielle”

The film of just under five minutes (2013) shows a face ageing from toddler to old woman – steadily and almost imperceptibly. Cerniello photographed members of a family with similar bone structure and had animators morph and interpolate the images. The result is a synthetic person who looks real: a face that never existed like this but is read as real – the basic move of the deepfake and of the interpolated self-portrait.

Key work: Danielle (2013)
Sources: Smithsonian Magazine · CBS News · SBS · Film on Vimeo

Paolo Cirio & Alessandro Ludovico – “Face to Facebook”

Part of the Hacking Monopolism Trilogy: in 2011 Cirio and Ludovico collected one million public Facebook profiles, sorted 250,000 of them by facial analysis according to “temperament” (“smug”, “easy going”, “sly”) and posted them on the fictional dating site Lovely-Faces.com. The action forced Facebook into a public debate about data access and the exploitation of profile pictures.

Key works: Face to Facebook (2011); other parts of the trilogy: Google Will Eat Itself, Amazon Noir
Sources: Official project page · Wikipedia · Instagram: @paolo.cirio.art

Lil Miquela

The CGI character appeared on Instagram in 2016, created by the Los Angeles start-up Brud, and became the icon of virtual celebrity: millions of followers, her own music (“Not Mine”, 2017), campaigns with Prada and Calvin Klein. In 2018 Brud staged a “hack” of her account by the rival character Bermuda, followed by a confession that she was a robot – a staged identity crash that turns social media influence itself into performance.

Key moments: launch 2016; “Not Mine” (2017); “account hack” by Bermuda (2018); included in TIME’s list of the most influential people on the internet (2018)
Sources: TechCrunch · The Ringer · BuzzFeed News · Instagram: @lilmiquela

Shudu

The “world’s first digital supermodel” was created in 2017 by British photographer Cameron-James Wilson through 3D modelling. The dark-skinned CGI figure sparked a debate about “digital blackface” and about whether a white creator may own and market a Black character. Shudu has appeared in campaigns for Balmain, among others, and works with brands and film studios today.

Key moments: Instagram debut 2017; debate 2018; campaigns incl. Balmain
Sources: BBC Worklife · LA Times/WWD · Refinery29 · Elle · Instagram: @shudu.gram

imma

Japan’s best-known “virtual human” comes from the Tokyo studio Aww Inc. and is recognisable by her pink bob; the images look so real that the virtuality only becomes apparent at second glance. imma works for IKEA, Porsche and Amazon and carries the Japanese tradition of virtual idols such as Hatsune Miku into the influencer age.

Key moments: debut 2018; campaigns incl. IKEA Japan, Porsche, Amazon Fashion Week Tokyo
Sources: Aww Inc. · Virtual Humans · Instagram: @imma.gram

Noonoouri

The cartoon-like CGI figure, invented by Joerg Zuber and his Munich agency Opium Effect, wears real designer fashion: campaigns for Dior, Balenciaga and Valentino, among others. Noonoouri shows how luxury brands detach celebrity completely from the body – no person, no scandals, total control. In 2023 she signed a record deal with Warner Music.

Key moments: launch 2018; campaigns for Dior, Balenciaga, Valentino; record deal with Warner Music (2023)
Sources: deutschland.de · Bernard Marr · Grazia · Instagram: @noonoouri

Boris Eldagsen (Germany) – “Pseudomnesia”

In 2023 Eldagsen entered the AI-generated image The Electrician from his series Pseudomnesia in the Sony World Photography Awards and won the creative category of the open competition. He refused the prize, explaining that he had wanted to test whether photo competitions were prepared for AI images: AI images and photography should not compete against each other. The case made it visible worldwide that the line between photograph and generated image has to be disclosed, because it can no longer be seen.

Key work: Pseudomnesia, incl. The Electrician (2022/23)
Sources: BBC · The Guardian

“From Selfie to Self-Expression” – Saatchi Gallery, London (2017)

One of the first major exhibitions to take the selfie seriously as an image form of its own and place it in the history of the self-portrait – with self-portraits from Rembrandt and van Gogh to Cindy Sherman alongside contemporary selfies. The exhibition marks the moment an institution raised the selfie from user behaviour to an art-historical subject.

Venue and dates: Saatchi Gallery, London, 31 March – 9 June 2017 (extended)
Sources: Saatchi Gallery · Evening Standard · Studio International

Further exhibitions

Gagosian, New York/Beverly Hills: Richard Prince, “New Portraits” (2014, 2020) · M+ Hong Kong: “Yasumasa Morimura and Cindy Sherman: Masquerades” (from December 2024) · Menil Collection, Houston: “Samuel Fosso: African Spirits” (2022/23) · New Museum / Rhizome, New York: Amalia Ulman, “First Look: Excellences & Perfections” (2014) · Jane Lombard Gallery, New York, Société Berlin and Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris: Lu Yang, DOKU (from 2021).