Surprise from a stranger - meeting Chuli Herrera

So imagine you post a picture on your social media. And bammmm!
You are all of a sudden famous. What would you do?

Some are attracted to this idea, and I would lie if I'd say I wasn't. But I was a bit shocked when I saw an artmirrorselfie hanging in an exhibition. But let's don't rush so fast forward!

In today's online world pictures and words travel faster than ever. This is why I am always careful about what and how I post.

One day ArtMirrorSelfies was tagged on a photo of a corner of a picture frame. Well...weird, but whatever. People are weird. Then weeks later it was tagged again by the same person on a blurry, half-done painting talking about "details" in Spanish. Still weird. "Am I being scammed somehow?" - I was wondering.

Then again a couple of weeks later I was tagged on pictures of an opening, in a gallery with similar style paintings, and all of the paintings had the same topic: Art Mirror Selfies.

This is how I found Chuli Herrera - or he found me in fact - a young artist from Cuba.

His exhibition opened in March in Galería Galiano, Havana, Cuba. His perception in this exhibition was observing the self-portrait as a form of self-expression. He plays with the idea of being on the edge of immortality by preserving ourselves on canvas for eternity. 

The rest I share in his words:

“COMO YO PUEDO” ("How can I" - edit) establishes connections between the self-portrait in the painting of great masters, and the phenomenon of self-representation through photography - thanks to the selfie. In return, it links together the painting and social media. The artist chose Instagram to look for the publications whose location refers to the studios or homes of the world's most important artists in the field of self-portrait - Alberto Durero, Frida Kahlo, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Diego Rivera, Edvard Munch, Osvaldo Guayasamín, Salvador Dalí, among others - and so find a current view of this phenomenon of self-expression through selfies in front of mirrors (mirror selfie)."

An interesting idea, isn't it? I'm using the mirror of a great mater (here Rembrandt), to take a selfie as a representation of myself. The same object that he could have used to make a self-portrait, as a representation of himself. The object itself connect us in time and space.

So this is how and ArtMirrorSelfie travels the world and ends up in a random gallery in Havana, and becomes, who knows...famous one day.