Gold reflective material gives every portrait a shared atmosphere before any image is posted.
Participatory social-media installation · 2013
Be Superfabulous
A participatory gold-room installation that turns self-display, affirmation and Instagram circulation into the material of the artwork.
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Project typeArtwork · Installation / environment · Collaboration
ThemesParticipation & co-design
FormParticipatory social-media installation
Developed2013
Produced byMAC Gas Natural Fenosa
PresentedCuarto Público · Santiago de Compostela
01 · Proposition
Fabulousness is staged, worn and circulated
Be Superfabulous immerses visitors in a glittering room where declaring an ideal self becomes both a playful ritual and a public image.
The collective transformed a hotel room into a saturated gold environment for the Cuarto Público art fair. A mirror, reflective surfaces and badges printed with the declaration ‘I am superfabulous’ gave visitors a set of simple props through which to pose, perform and temporarily inhabit a heightened version of themselves.
The encounter continued through Instagram, where participants could enter the project’s image stream wearing the badge. By linking a physically immersive room to social-media circulation, the installation reflected the desire to select, polish and display an idealised identity online—while making that impulse communal, conspicuous and knowingly excessive.
Video documentation
Enter the gold room
02 · Experience
Enter, declare, circulate
- 01
Enter
Visitors cross into a hotel room wrapped in reflective gold, leaving the visual restraint of the fair behind.
- 02
Declare
A mirror and ‘I am superfabulous’ badge invite each participant to pose and inhabit an amplified public persona.
- 03
Circulate
Portraits move onto Instagram, extending the room’s performance into a shared stream of idealised selves.
03 · Reflection
The mirror anticipates the feed
The installation makes the construction of an online self physical, collective and difficult to mistake for an unmediated identity.
Be Superfabulous was created as image-based social media was becoming an everyday stage for self-presentation. Its playful excess turns that behaviour into a spatial experience: the gold room supplies an atmosphere, the badge supplies a statement and the camera supplies an audience. Participation is celebratory, but the repetition of the same declaration across different bodies also exposes the conventions through which individuality is performed and validated online.
‘I am superfabulous’ becomes a wearable prompt for posture, confidence and public self-description.
The installation joins embodied participation with the circulation and accumulation of social-media images.
Exhibition history
Selected presentations
Be Superfabulous · Cuarto Público
Cuarto Público art fair
Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Credits & archive
Project record
- Collective creation
- Ricardo O’Nascimento, Miguel Mariño, Juan Lesta, Belén Montero (DSK), Jeremy Keenan and Iria do Castelo
- Production
- Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Gas Natural Fenosa (MAC)
- Development context
- MAC Artistic Residencies, October–November 2013
