We live in a world where urgency dissolves into captions and comments. Social media is a powerful tool that the world is still learning how to use without falling behind. Watching friends and family post images about world events left me faced with a question that I couldn’t shake: when does awareness become a performance?
This project was my response to my internal quagmire. I wanted to sit inside the tension between visibility and responsibility while exploring things like virtue signaling, white saviors, and performative activism. To ask whether posting, sharing, and signaling alignment could ever be enough, or whether those actions sometimes function as an end point rather than a beginning.
Completed in 2024, The Performance exists as a sister project to Sparkle. Both pieces share an intimate tone and fascination for process. The Performance specifically takes time to ask harder questions about what action looks like. Can our need to be seen coexist with a genuine commitment to change? If activism is inevitable performance, what does it mean to perform without intention and accountability?
The Performance does not offer answers. Only the invitation to sit with the question a little longer.