Darby Olcott's Projects

BFA Student

Major: Photography

Graduation Year: 2018

Artist Statement:

Our love for looking at a digital screen stems from our fascination of having a voyeuristic experience. The act of looking upon bodies that entertain our lust is readily accessible and encouraged by those who crave instant gratification, especially online. We have the power to choose what content to consume and lean toward subjects that validate our social and physical aspirations. The yearning to meet society's standard for beauty has led to a higher demand for extremely invasive procedures that alter the body permanently. My refusal to accept this reality prompted the creation of a new one that is critical of social media's effect on youth culture, body image, and the objective gaze by manipulating my body through discomforting actions. I hope I can further the deconstruction of our society’s normalized patriarchal and materialistic culture through performing with my body and surroundings to create a new reality is critical of popular culture by using its language. The first step in rejecting aesthetic medicine is addressing how we contribute to the power structures that have normalized it.

Biography:

Born in New York in 1995, Darby Olcott is a millennial artist studying, working, and living in Portland, Maine. She obtained a Bachelor’s in Fine Art in May 2018 with a degree in Photography. Her work spans a variety of mediums including photography, video, performance, and sculpture. In our current socio-political environment, as survivor of assault, and an advocate for the right to her body, she believes it is important for her audience to experience these events from a female perspective.

A reserved, strange woman, she enjoys the indecent qualities in life: bodily fluids, rotting carcasses, and macabre environments.