FOMO
WAAS gallery, dAllas, TX, 2015
Using metaphor and visual storytelling as artistic material, this work references both past and contemporary culture. In large-scale charcoal drawings, Jaeggli reinterprets sentiments of emptiness and angst found over time from the advent of postcards to present-day engagement with social media. The result is an intersection of modern culture with Jaeggli’s highly contemplative imagination. We generally think of the idea of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) as the humorous acknowledgement in texts and on social media of missing out on social engagements, in which others might be having rewarding experiences. However, Jaeggli’s work explores the darker side of FOMO: the anxiety and sense of dread that threatens the self, convincing you that you do not really exist if you are not socially engaged. It is about the impossibility of solitude in such a connected world. In drawings depicting solitary female figures, Jaeggli reflects on how isolation and exclusion can actually give rise to personal narrative. Her figures, who frequently turn their backs to the viewer and gaze off to the distance, draw the viewer in. The female figures are popped out of a social world and utterly isolated in unnatural space somewhere between the ground and the viewer. The viewer has to look in voyeuristically from the perspective of the figure and consider her narrative and vantage point. Where social media encourages us to reflect almost exclusively from our own vantage point, Jaeggli’s work asks the viewer to consider alternate narratives. Similar to women who pass on oral traditions, weave tapestries or sew quilts, make family albums, these women are unified by their roles as stewards/mouthpieces/beacons of the larger collective consciousness and culture.
