Awake

Awake 2022

My new Awake series is the first set of selfies I have exhibited since becoming a parent in 2020 and after COVID isolation lockdowns - a time of personal upheaval and change. On the other side of this transformation, I chose to dive into a new medium - the evolving world of NFTs and Web3, a new currency and movement with great potential. These Awake images are a collection of NFTs for sale on the Tezos blockchain. I chose Tezos over Ethereum and other blockchains because of its environmentally friendly and cost effective qualities.

Awake Project Statement

Every morning, I photographed my face as soon as I woke up. It was a purposeful, self-imposed ritual where I got one shot to document my state of being at that moment. It’s an act that ignores any personal notions of vanity especially as I posted each and every photo to the web.

The repetition of my face day after day is my personal record of a simple life activity. Similar to selfie takers all over the world, I am documenting a moment in time with a ubiquitous form of photography. I am discomforted by the act of the selfie, especially when it reinforces outdated standards of beauty. I am drawn to the work by feminist artists of the 1970s who questioned gender stereotypes. A moving and inspiring piece is Eleanor Antin’s Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, where she lost 10 pounds of her own body weight over 37 days and photographed the process scientifically as she lost the weight, making a cultural and societal critique of the pressures women face to be thin and attractive. The Awake series is my way of contributing to this conversation which 40 years later has not lost relevance. This action towards self-discovery allows me to move away from self-judgement and my personal assumptions about how I look best, or how I look at my worst. I invite my audience, my voyeurs, into a banal and unidealized life, into my private moments.

more info

Christina gave a TED talk about the Awake project in 2014. Watch the video to learn more about Awake.

The Awake series was started in July 2012 and ended in early 2016. Occasionally Christina will post a recent Awake photo on Instagram. Christina brought back the Awake project 10 years later in 2022 to compare selfies a decade apart.

Click here to see the project website with all 900+ Awake photos