Angelica Castro-Mendoza | Donna Scareaway: Into Performance and Online Feminisms

 
Donna Scareaway is first and foremost, a performance art piece. The performance consists of creating a persona, creating her brand, her website, her Instagram. The character is an internet famous feminist performance artist. Her art and her website would embody all the contradictions present in contemporary feminisms and further the contradictions of feminist art –as art is so largely entangled with capital. Feminism is excessively commercialized and currently very popular. Simultaneously, we would like to think of platforms like Instagram as democraticizing of art while often forgetting how much control we surrender to them. Ultimately, these conundrums are complex, so this performance is as much an exploration as it is a critique.
The purpose is to get viewers, especially, to think critically about the questions that arise with feminist art on new media platforms. I want my viewers to ask which feminisms are visible and why that may be. Furthermore, I want my viewers to understand that while certain visible feminisms may be the ones that challenge very little structurally, there is still an undoubted amount of misogyny that women working with their bodies for their performance art face.
This performance also challenges me to be vulnerable in ways that are uncomfortable. As much as it could be uncomfortable, I wanted people to be slightly uncomfortable, to come face to face with whatever it was that causes them discomfort about this genre of art I am responding to. Is it truly narcissism of these types of artists or is it their apparent shamelessness or is it the fact that they’re using their bodies? Is it the fact that anyone can make this type of art and become famous for it? Perhaps, that idea is illusory, too.
As well as implicating the viewer to some degree, I also aim to address how these artists are frequently covered by media. There are two main critiques of this genre of art: it’s narcissistic and shallow or it’s the height of feminist art. Sometimes, it’s even called activism and perhaps, it is. But again, the goal is to complicate popular narratives and force people to think about online feminisms through creating a character that was contradictory and messy.
My main audience is younger people, but really this piece is relevant to anyone and everyone. It is relevant to people studying trends in art, trends in technology, and people invested in any pursuit of feminism.
Donna Scareaway is explicit and acerbic, it aims to be critical and nuanced as possible, adopting both a cringey aesthetic and a sarcastic tone. The media of this performance and the performance itself are a testament to how complicated post-internet art and feminism in late capitalism can be.