Pen and Paper

Jellyfish Journals

‘The Grosstagram’

In 2015, I noticed a change in my Instagram feed. There had been a rise in sponsored content, and these pixel-perfect, professionally shot images had begun to influence the rest of the user base. Most accounts began to share more polished and curated versions of life on the platform. At the time, I was spending most of my life at the university library and living in the cramped attic of a decrepit student apartment - I knew there were others like myself who felt increasingly distant from the image of the world as seen on social media.

As a response, I created ‘The Grosstagram’ - an intervention of slime, gunk, and grime into the perfectly curated image feed of Instagram. These images are close-cropped and zoomed-in - asking the viewer to stay with the slime for a second, despite the potential nausea, to try and answer the question, “What is that stuff?!” While the platform as a whole had its head up, looking towards gorgeous sunset panoramas, I was pulling my audience to look down at the ground, at the stagnant water on the street, and the murky sludge revealed by the thawing snow. Here are the leftovers of the perfectly plated food pic. Here is the ground after the dazzling music festival. This is the world, in all its gunk and glory - and is there not a strange beauty to it?

Click here to join The Grosstagram.