This Exhibition Explores the Sinister Side of Being a Girl Online

“Having been young girls with early access to Instagram during the golden era of Tumblr in 2011, we’ve been fascinated by the images that girls choose to represent themselves with online,” say artists Lucia Farrow and Mila Rowyszyn, both of whom were born in 2000.

We’re speaking at Des Bains in London, where their film Obsidian Upset is being screened as part of an exhibition of the same name, curated by Kollektiv Collective, alongside works by painter Elsa Rouy and LA-based photographers Chessa Subbiondo and Stolen Besos. “Whether it’s photos of themselves or symbols that communicate what kind of girl they are through various aesthetic choices – French-manicured nails, a matcha latte, fishnet tights – these aesthetics shape the image of how one wishes to be perceived online.” Obsidian Upset explores girlhood in the age of Instagram, bedroom culture and social media bloggers through the dark and seductive lens of Hollywood.

In their 19-minute film, Farrow and Rowyszyn have created an alternative world of nostalgia that exists primarily on a Tumblr page. Described as “a psycho-sexual neo-noir about bloggers starring bloggers”, Obsidian Upset was filmed in Los Angeles and stars Beanie Boylston and Niko Rubio. Set to a serene, spa-like soundtrack, the film opens with a silhouette of a girl on horseback, gently rocking in slow motion, before swiftly transitioning to a bedroom scene with plush, white silk sheets, where a young woman lounges in her underwear. She is entirely absorbed in scrolling through Instagram on her phone. The camera zooms in, following her perfectly manicured hands as she posts content online, keeping her followers updated: “wearing my obsidian necklace today <3 fuck mercury in retrograde,” she captions.

A young woman delivers a parcel from a CBD company, with instructions on optimal timing for posting an advertisement. During a photoshoot in the Californian desert, the CBD begins to take effect, and chaos ensues. The friends argue over which photo to post online, when suddenly, viscous black liquid spills from the blogger’s phone into an ‘obsidian mirror oil spill.’ As the hazy desert landscape warps into a daze, the protagonist declares, “I’m an artefact. In this, I’ll be forever 22.”

This moment encapsulates the film’s exploration of how digital media transforms women into ‘artefacts’ preserved in a perpetual state of youth and beauty. “The role of social media transcends the realm of personal development in the Western circus of consumption,” explain curators Pia Zeitzen and Sasha Shevchenko of Kollektiv Collective. “Serving an archival function whose validity and impact remain points of contention, social media immortalise their users, eventually rendering them artefacts in themselves.”. It is both a lament and a celebration – an acknowledgement of the immortality granted by being forever online, yet forever frozen in time.

Farrow and Rowyszyn’s film was three years in the making, and began with a “cliché” ambition: making a film in Los Angeles. But their approach is far from conventional. “We embarked on a cliché many have taken before – making a film in LA,” Farrow reflects. Yet, LA, with its “sharp, angelic, white light, Frank Lloyd Wright architecture, red leather diners, and endlessly beautiful dirty boulevards and dead-ends,” becomes more than just a backdrop in Obsidian Upset – it’s a silent, omnipresent character influencing the narrative. The film captures the duality of LA – a city of dreams and disillusionment, where possibilities are endless, but so are the pitfalls.

“As doors opened and shut in our faces, we realised the power it had in signifying the possibility, or demise, of dreams,” Farrow and Rowyszyn explain. This duality is reflected in the film’s aesthetic, a blend of suspenseful neo-noir elements and a “pristine, cold, blogger aesthetic”. The artists describe how the film both criticises Hollywood’s obsession with perfection and the constructed femininity it promotes, through the film’s “sarcastic female gaze”. Obsidian Upset performs an overdramatisation and exaggeration of femininity in the digital age, and its descent into a chaotic, nightmarish vision underscores its darker side; how the digital mirrors we create in our private spaces can distort reality and trap us in a perpetual cycle of self-obsession and alienation.

The exhibition is brought together by a black vinyl door and wall installation, a reflection of the obsidian oil spill that serves as a backdrop to the film, photography and paintings. “The mysterious black CBD liquid that spirals the main character into delirium quite literally spills out into the exhibition space,” say Zeitzen and Shevchenko of Kollektiv Collective. Each element of the exhibition, from Elsa Rouy’s painting of a still from the film, rendered in acrylic and ink, to Chessa Subbiondo and Stolen Besos’s photographs of iPhone photo reels, contributes to a narrative that is both linear and fragmented – echoing the non-linear storytelling of psycho-thrillers and film noir. 

Obsidian Upset is a tribute to the complexities of growing up in the digital age, inviting us to explore the constantly blurred lines between reality and digital perception, adolescence and adulthood, love and hatred. The exhibition is both critical and celebratory, challenging us to confront the digital mirrors we face every day and the ways in which they shape, distort, and preserve our identities. 

Obsidian Upset curated by Kollektiv Collective is on show at Des Bains in London until August 17.