Amalia Ulman

Over a period of four months in 2014, the artist Amalia Ulman created an elaborate fiction on her Instagram account in which she depicted a girl in search of fame in the city of Los Angeles. An intensification of the performance that is our online life, Excellences and Perfections narrates the transformation of her character from innocence to plastic surgery. According to some critics, this was the “first Instagram masterpiece”, while others saw it as a prophecy of what would become of the social network that needs least words and most successfully embodies the idea of the building of identity as a personal and meticulously constructed personal brand.

Amalia Ulman was born in Buenos Aires, was brought up in Gijón, studied in London and now lives in Los Angeles. The Excellences & Perfections performance is archived at Rhizome and the New Museum (New York) and was shown at Tate Modern and in Whitechapel (London). Her most recent works have appeared in Frieze Live and in exhibitions at Arcadia Missa (London), New Galerie (Paris), James Fuentes (New York), BARRO (Buenos Aires) and the Armory Show (New York), among others.