Don’t like the Kardashians? You can still learn from Kris Jenner

Kris Jenner is having none of it. The fearsome but beloved mother of the Kardashians – or at least a holographic representation of her - is holding court at the Monash University Museum of Art, and letting people know what she thinks of artist Scotty So.

“All right everyone, buckle up, because I need to get something off my chest,” she snipes. “We need to talk about this so-called artist Scotty So, and I’m just going to say it. His art? Not it. I’m sorry, but I can’t even pretend like I’m impressed by whatever it is he’s trying to do.”

What the Melbourne-based artist is “trying to do” with this AI-generated hologram of himself as Jenner, all sassy nods and gestures, sparkly jacket and power-mum, cropped haircut, is to explore the notion of image.

Scotty So channels Kris Jenner in a hologram project exploring the nature of image-making. Credit: MUMA

So is among 18 artists and collectives included in the Image Economies exhibition, an exploration of how digital technologies impact the creation and sharing of images, cultural practices and our perceptions of the world.

The show, being staged to celebrate MUMA’s 50th anniversary, also includes works by Tracey Moffatt, D Harding and the Tennant Creek Brio. Co-curator Melanie Oliver says the aim is “to explore how image production has always been shaped by technological advances, with contemporary tools like AI, digital infrastructures and algorithms representing the latest iteration”.

“We’re interested in ideas of authenticity and also the commodification of imagery, how images are consumed, how much agency we retain over our personal data and online selves, and the value we attribute to images in an image-saturated world.”

Hong-Kong born So has long used dressing up and drag performance to illustrate the slipperiness of identity. He decided to play Jenner after watching an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians in which Paris Hilton inspired Jenner to make a hologram of herself. Serendipitously, So owns the same hologram machine as Jenner, and it’s uncanny to watch him impersonate one of the world’s most famous mothers. “It’s about how images translate and transform through pop culture moments, and through technology,” he says of his contributions to Image Economies.

While So isn’t a fan of reality television, he watches the Kardashians because there’s an awareness that they’re curating an image, with Jenner as the matriarch. “She has the mentality of being the momager [mom and manager], and in the art industry there’s lots of strong working women,” says So. “There’s this energy I’m drawn to. I’m using her as a way to seek validation as a queer artist.”

Both comic and sincere, the AI element of the work is important. “It’s a comment on the technology itself,” So says. “Because I’m a queer man, an artist who’s POC [person of colour], it has that fragility to the work, it [inevitably] becomes the perspective of a queer person looking into a motherly figure of pop culture.” But instead of judging AI or celebrity emulation, “the focus is the mimicking to show different perspectives of the truth”, he says.

The exhibition theme arose when Oliver and her co-curators, Stephanie Berlangieri and Francis E. Parker, noticed how many artists in MUMA’s collection had worked with the new technologies of their time. While Ian Burn photocopied photographs in 1968, James Barth now uses 3D modelling software. Three themes eventually emerged as the curators considered this history: the materiality of digital technologies; how the digital meets Indigenous cultural practices; and the links between representation, pop culture and social media.

Victoria Todorov, Cicciolina Triptych, 2024, oil on canvas. Credit: Courtesy of the artist

The latter theme is evident in the work of Melbourne artist Victoria Todorov, whose hyperreal paintings radiate an intensely “online” energy. The exhibition includes her portraits of three complicated women: Cicciolina, also known as Ilona Anna Staller, a former porn star who became an Italian politician; Anna Nicole Smith, a Playboy model and TV personality who, at the age of 26, famously married an 89-year-old billionaire; and Toni Holt Kramer, founder of the US president’s all-female cheer squad, the Trumpettes. All three women have a definitive aesthetic — and each is as capable of wielding the power of their image as they are of being defined by it. “These women are all divisive figures,” says Todorov. “Cicciolina is a recurring inspiration for my practice; her blend of sexuality and progressive politics starkly contrast the glamour and politics of Toni Holt Kramer.

“Anna Nicole was pilloried for her beauty and life, so I find revisiting these individuals interesting in combination ... Politics, sex, beauty, progressive, conservative — the tension of all of these are embodied by the works.”

From left, Victoria Todorov, Trumpettes (MAGA) 2024 and Anna Nicole Glamour, 2024.Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Rather than painting the portraits herself, Todorov creates a physical or digital collage that she sends to a specialist Chinese painting factory. She likes the idea of “factory art”, she says, “because it reflects the world we now live in — a world where everything is commodified and for sale”.

In focusing on celebrity culture and image reproduction, Todorov makes a weighty point. “I see my work as a response to the era of post-truth,” she says. “We live in a world where truth seems to hold less importance, replaced by narratives constructed and mediated entirely through images.” Rather than being cynical, Todorov engages with – even celebrates – this world. Her portraits are about “holding artifice up to reverence”.

Sione Tuívailala Monū, an artist of Tongan descent who lives between Australia and New Zealand, takes a more personal approach to the question of image creation, turning a decade of Instagram stories into an intimate archive of everyday life. The scenes are manifold: Monū checking if they can double a cake recipe; smoking a cigarette; installing an artwork; laughing; making memes about orgasms; dancing in their lounge room.

Sione Tuívailala Monū, Stories 2015–25 (iPhone video still). Credit: Courtesy of the artist and Robert Heald Gallery, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington

While some stories feel candid, others parody the “main character” energy of Instagram. Many feature nimamea’a tuikakala, the Tongan art of flower-designing to create beautiful floral, beaded adornments and objects. “My kahoa practice is very experimental and not at all traditional, but very much inspired by my youth growing up making and watching my aunties and grandparents make kahoa for celebrations like weddings and birthdays,” says Monū.

But can social media flatten one’s sense of culture or identity? “I don’t think the personal can ever truly be homogenised,” Monū says, arguing that Instagram is a way of collectively sharing individual selves. “Even if it’s just food porn or holiday snaps, people still present and frame their stories in a very personal or specific way, so there are always insights in people’s stories even if they don’t realise it.”

Image Economies opens at MUMA on February 8.