There are a few (uh, very few as a matter of fact) artists in SL that I am really enthusiastic about. One of them, of course, is Nebulosus Severine. What struck me at first about her work was here was a woman making highly charged, emotional, and very personal work in an environment that is overrun with male artists making cool and clean geometric abstractions. I realize that is a huge overstatement of the condition of SL art at the moment, but this is what absolutely resonated with me when I first encountered her work. Since we started talking it on the podcast, a few more artists whose work references emotional states have come forward, but at the time I first experienced her work she was the only one willing to go there, and I thought that for sure she deserved our attention and praise for that even if nothing more.

My mind goes to several different places in trying to talk about my attraction to her work. I am reminded, for instance, ways in which people have historically tried to cover up mental illness and depression (everything from cutting out pictures of people who committed suicide from family photos – making it as if they never existed – to the more straightforward institutionalization of those deemed “antisocial”).

Our clean and “perfect” world of SL offers an escape from things about ourselves that we’d rather run away from. Avatars never have to “look” sick, depressed, upset, or anything of the sort. There’s a lot of hiding you can do in SL. But that’s not what her practice is about at all. Rather, she is about reminding you constantly about the real person behind the avatar and all the baggage that comes with her.

I am also reminded of the history of artists who have used “the body in horror” as a way of eviscerating the deep pain sensed not only within themselves but as part of the culture at large; artists like Hans Bellmer, Hermann Nitsch, and Karen Finley, to name a few. Nebulosus mentions Robert Longo as a strong influence on her work, and thinking of his pieces with contorted bodies, I can definitely see the impact.

And lastly, one of the things I find really fascinating is that Nebulosus’s work is especially well-suited to the SL environment. If I encountered a real-life installation like “de-sexed” in a gallery in NYC, I would object to it – it would be too big, too overbearing, and most of all, too expensive (it would be impossible to look at and not think of the thousands of dollars that would go into building it). An artist could convey the same sentiment in RL in a way more economical and less dramatic way; in RL, the maxim of “less is more” holds an awful lot of weight. However, in SL, her work fits – in order to compete with the vast, endless environment, it makes sense that her work is as large and aggressive as it is. That she is revealing such personal, hidden pain in such a public manner (and again, in an environment where hiding that pain is the easiest thing to do) makes it all the more gutsy.

We’ve talked quite a bit on the podcasts about “Look What You Made Me Do” and “de-sexed,” so I’m going to let those projects go for the moment. She also has a new project that has caught my eye - I’m not entirely sure she sees as art just yet, but I sure do. With one foot planted in SL and one in Flickr, she is slowly changing her avatar to reflect more what she “really” looks like. In a conversation with her, she stated, “It began about a year and a half ago originally when I made my shape more androgynous. […] I was a bit tired of looking at my thin avatar and feeling bad about my RL body. […] Just recently, I made a shorter, less svelte shape.”

This very simple act underscores a fundamental problem with SL – the assumption, which comes as soon as you log in and are assigned an avatar – that somehow we all want to be perfect in a Barbie-doll kind of way. Is that what we really all want? It scares me to even contemplate the answer for more than a second. My scars – my imperfections, my fuckedupness – make me who I am and yours make you who you are, too. I’d like to see them and have you see them as well.

Note: I’m trying to start a new series of articles about artists I find notable, and on their work not only on the BiW sim but beyond it as well. This is the first in that series.

Posted by Amy Freelunch on Sunday, June 1st, 2008 at 3:00 am.