Cyber Fantasy

Esc Enter

Hands

Glitch

By combining themes of mortality with themes of excess, and referencing the styles of Vanitas and Dutch still life, this series explores the overlaps between the obsolescence of technology, and the consequential state of photography in a highly saturated image culture. This cross-examination establishes the relationship between the digital and the temporary. Despite the almost universal use of digital tools as cosmetic tools for photographs, this series asks how those digital tools can be used as an extension of the hand, including the artist’s own hands, to interact with the arrangements as an interplay with the push and pull of the permanence of images.

“Cyber Fantasy” challenges the borders of the frame and the screen by digitizing and manipulating the traditional still life to further investigate its place in post-Internet art. The title is derived from contextualizing the definitions: “cyber” meaning of or relating to computers, typically to one of the technology domains named with the combining form cyber-, as cyberterrorism, cyberwarfare, or cyberattack; and “fantasy” meaning imagination, especially when extravagant and unrestrained.

Savannah Calhoun (she/they, b. 1997) is a photo-based interdisciplinary artist originally from Indianapolis, Indiana. She received a BFA in Photography from the Herron School of Art and Design in 2019 and will receive her MFA from the University of Missouri in May 2022. Calhoun has been exhibiting nationally and internationally since 2018 and has shown her works at George Caleb Bingham Gallery, Dogmaster Distillery and Columbia Art League, among others. She has previously been a photographer for non-profit PATTERN Magazine in Indianapolis. Calhoun is currently part of a cohort of artists-in-residence through the Dear Artists with Anxiety platform run by Benz Amatayakul Kuipers. Find her on Instagram @sav.calhoun