MAKE ME FEEL GOOD is a series of self-portraits, still lifes, and photographic objects which centralize around the intersection of feminism and the gaze within a digital cosmos, through the lens of the modern pornography webscape — OnlyFans. This work examines the heightened ways in which the pornographic industry has contemporaneously mutated the gaze to perpetuate systems of gender inequality through the guise of capital empowerment. With a range of methods, this series infiltrates the consumer gaze through the use of imagery and research mined from the OnlyFans site. The work utilizes analog collage to sew appropriated images into environments and hyperbolic costuming, referencing the performative and plastic nature of the OnlyFans ethos. Swatches of spray-tanned flesh, objects from Amazon wishlists of OnlyFans content creators, and pieces of bedrooms are reconstituted as the material residue of the online. This body of work uses crude, physical construction to articulate infinite, intangible digital space. The cardboard stage set is tethered by visible fishing line and artifacts of the bubblegum-colored home studio are erected as paper monuments, standing only long enough for the performance. Censoring, obscuring, or exaggerating weaponizes the power of looking and dismantles the hierarchy between the viewer and the viewed.

 

MAKE ME FEEL GOOD calls into question the platform’s ability to incubate empty connections and false gestures of intimacy centralized around sex, fetish, and performance. The work utilizes pieces of text extracted from the content creator’s automated, subscription-based direct messages, sent as beacons of empty affection. When stripped of their context, the messages are decoded. A neon sign demands — MAKE ME FEEL GOOD.