ALINA FRIESKE

Can you see me better now? is an investigation and recreation into how individuals are recognised and reflected in the virtual environment of the Internet. Thus, new narratives are envisioned.

The images brought together are based on every day smartphone photos from the endless pool of the web, which, cut out into smaller fractions, serve as a colour palette and brushstrokes. Alina aims towards a better understanding of the overall picture, looking from a distance. In their accumulated form, the photographic artifacts turn into collective portraits.

In times of extreme personalisation and self-exposure, we constantly create updated versions of ourselves. The more we show, the more recommendations we receive and the better our profile is read from the outside. We begin to look solely at reflections and echoes from ourselves. Increasingly we lose track about the images we produce and the visual information that gets extracted by others. People become data and profiles. Profiles in turn will be re-categorised far away from their initial context. With reference to the pictorial history of portraits, the work questions the potential of photography for the imaginary, fictional and virtual.

The single image, detached from its fleeting life as scroll function behind the screen, is interpreted as part of a larger pattern. Put together, the images camouflage themselves in their mutual imitation.

Which contours remain recognisable and what blurs in the crowd? The work experiments the singular and the multitude, between the detail and the overview, asking what makes an individual and how precisely we want to be seen?

Alina Frieske (born in 1994, Aachen, Germany), lives and works in Aachen and Berlin, Germany.

She works with assembled images and studies the intersection between photography and painting. With an interest in found material online and its circulation, the work deals with the dynamics of abstraction and identification.From 2014 to 2017, she studied and graduated, summa cum laude, with a Bachelor in Visual Communication, from the Maastricht Academy of Media Design and Technology in the Netherlands. From 2017 to 2019, Alina graduated with a Master in Photography, mention with excellence from the ECAL, University of Art and Design Lausanne, in Lausanne, Switzerland.

She participated in many exhibitions such as: Abglanz, organised by Twenty Fourteen at Pananti Atelier, 2021, Milano IT; Abglanz, Festival Images Vevey, Biennale des Arts Visuels, 2020, Vevey, CH; Group show, PhotoSchweiz, 2020, Zürich, CH; Group show, Plat(t)form, 2020 Winterthur, CH; Diploma Show, ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, 2019, Lausanne, CH; Entkunstung, online exhibition “The Screen is not the Limit”, 2019, AT; Theater aan het Vrijthof during TEFAF, 2019, Maastricht, NL; Group Show, Mirage Club, 2018, Paris, FR; Unintended Portraits, ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, 2018, Lausanne, CH; Finalists Henriette Hustinx prize exhibition, 2017, Maastricht, NL; Graduation show-Class 2017, MAMDT, 2017, Maastricht, NL.

Alina was selected for the Ones to Watch, in the British Journal of Photography, 2020.

Alina was a finalist at the 35th International Festival of Photography of Hyères, 2020, in Hyères, France. In 2019, she received the Promotion of Aspiring Photographers at the Swiss Art Council Pro Helvetia, Switzerland. In 2019, she was awarded a prize of excellence from the Domaine Design et Arts Visuels, from the HES-SO, Lausanne, Switzerland. In 2017, Alina was awarded the Henriette Hustinx Prize Maastricht, in The Netherlands.