Jess Alvarez

I am a multidisciplinary artist who likes to create large scale sculptures and installations. I focus on themes of mortality, celebrity, and contemporary issues of vanity and digital aged complications within a wider context of evolution and historical phenomena. A lot of my work this year has considered frameworks of post-humanism, biopolitics and human exceptionalism seen in today’s society.

Throughout, I researched different forms of vanity, from the digital culture of selfies, face-tuning and image editing to cosmetic surgery and the ways we mimic the role of the social doctor. Beginning with elite plastic surgery procedures and moving towards the high-street proliferation of body-altering practices, I explored how these processes reflect and reproduce the perfected life advertised online.

I started this project from previous research of carnophallogocentrism and the idea of the creatures’ flesh, highlighting the meat industry as an indicator of moral health and modernity but also deploys human exceptionalism as the omniscient, infallible final voice of reason. I combined the idea that if you view evolution as a linear development, we should be at the peak of our existence but focusing on celebrities like the Kardashians, who have formed a world of vanity and parasocial relationships that fund their lifestyles of perfection highlights moral degradation of contemporary society. This karnocene installation wants you to realise the ridiculousness of taking advice from celebrities in the digital world, as well as the absurdity of celebrity wellness companies being the peak of our linear evolution.

I started this project from previous research of carnophallogocentrism and the idea of the Carnocene. The Carnocene a name for our geological era and ‘a landscape damaged in order to accommodate for an appetite for the flesh of other creatures’, highlighting the meat industry as an indicator of moral health and modernity but also deploys human exceptionalism as the omniscient, infallible final voice of reason. However, side effects of this leadership role see existential tensions produced within Western society. From this I turned my attention to the side of society that are unaffected by these existential threats and see this point in evolution as a time to turn inward, focusing on vanity and secular issues. The result being online personality overtaking reality’s significance. So, I created the Karnocene, a place where contemporary public figures meet the concept of a world where we are obsessed with the flesh of others. I combined the idea that if you view evolution as a linear development, we should be at the peak of our existence. The influence of celebrities such as the Kardashians, whose carefully constructed personas foster vanity and parasocial relationships that sustain their lifestyles of perfection, reflects the wider moral degradation of contemporary society.

Although the Kardashians do not directly obsess over other creatures’ flesh, the Karnocene reflects obsession in a new light through a hybrid of the mother daughter-duo, Kris Jenner and Kim Kardashian, forming Krim. A symbol of everything wrong with the digital personality that overtakes the importance of reality. She also spotlights my research into the pseudoscientist who thinks he can defeat death, Bryan Johnson. His longevity project sees him undertake a multitude of tests, experiments all of which hope to defeat death, age and end the quest for the fountain of youth. His documentation, or oversharing of his journey, and its invasive endeavours are all to be seen online on his Instagram.

I have created a world whereby celebrity wellness companies and their treatments have become addictive. Much like the current Ozempic trend, or all other trending supplements meant to cure your unhappiness. This Karnocene installation wants you to realise the ridiculousness of taking advice from celebrities in the digital world, as well as the absurdity of celebrity wellness companies being the peak of our linear evolution.

The Karnocene: Krim Kardashian and Bryan Johnson