Identity Remix – A Simulacrum of the Self in Contemporary Art

Abstract

This article analyses the conceptions of identity in contemporary times by delving into art practices from the 1970s onwards that deal with topics such as the construction of the self, identity as simulacrum, gender as masquerade, cyberfeminism, the cyborg, the techno-medical body or online identity fluidity. In the information and digital era, new technological, medical and scientific developments like genetic engineering, biotechnology, surgical and hormonal procedures and the Internet permeate our lives, affecting the perception, representation and understanding of the self. Through the analysis of the work of Lynn Hershman Leeson, ORLAN and Francesca da Rimini, this article examines contemporary art practices that reflect on these current issues, mirroring contemporary changes, subverting homogenising and repressive articulations of identity, and considering the new malleability, reproducibility and plurality of the self. These art practices ultimately represent the merging of human and machine, of original and copy, of natural and artificial, of the corporeal and the virtual.