Molly Soda
Cutting My Bangs At Home!, 11.08.2020
Molly Soda (alas Amalia Soto), a Puerto Rican artist currently living and working in New York, has become an internet celebrity thanks to her appearances on social media platforms. For the HEK Net Works series, she created the work Cutting My Bangs At Home!, an ironic reference to popular Internet phenomena. Cutting My Bangs At Home! was visible from 11.8 to 8.9.2020: https://vimeo.com/446837667
As an artist, she questions the process of building personal identities and their reception, playfully deconstructing the representation of women in popular culture. Her work includes the first Tween Dreams, a humorous series for teenagers in which she played each character; Me and My Bear, in which she documents her engagements with a six-foot teddy bear; and Should I Send This? a reading performance of all the messages from her Tumblr account. In 2017, she co-edited with Arvida Byström the book Pics or It Didn't Happen: Images Banned From Instagram. She has been called a cultural social media anthropologist and her work has been presented in museums and galleries around the world.
Statement by the artist: "In this video I attempt to follow various YouTube hair cutting tutorials, specifically for a style of bangs referred to as ‘curtain bangs.’ Many of these videos have been uploaded in the recent months of lockdown as most people haven't had access to a hairdresser and have a lot more time on their hands. The video acts as a personal archive as well as a time capsule of this very specific moment in time through an at-home haircut. The webcam acts as the mirror for me to cut my hair."