BOOK: Gracie Kendal's "1000+ Avatars Vol. 1 and 2" (2011)

Edited by Nickola Martynov, With contributions by Garrett Cobarr and Patrick Millard

Design by Kristine Schomaker
English, 10” x 8”, 160 pages, softcover
ISBN 978-0-9836572-2-4

Gracie Kendal, aka Kristine Schomaker is a Los Angeles based new media and performance artist, painter, and art historian. He latest project is called 1000+ Avatars, "a contemporary anthropology of portraits of avatars in the virtual world of Second Life". The portraits explore the idea of the avatar as a constructed online identity and deals with fluid notions of anonymity, personality, and diversity. This project is somehow reminiscent of Robbie Cooper's Alter Ego: Avatars and their Creators (2007).

As Kendal writes:

"The 1000 Avatars Project zooms in on the complex social and cultural conventions that determine our identity. The avatar becomes a vehicle for personal and public reflection. This series of portraits is a contemporary anthropology of a cross section of avatars from the virtual world of Second Life in the early 21st century. In these portraits, I explore the representation of the avatar as a construct, distinct from any traditional notion of the ‘self’. I examine the sitter’s identity and probe below the avatar surface to reveal and comment upon their character, personality and their diversity." (Gracie Kendal)

Link: Gracie Kendal's 1000+ Avatars

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti

Photo credit: 1000+ Avatars