So much of contemporary culture takes shape online, and nobody understands this as acutely as Gen Z and Millenials. We came of age on the internet and were granted access, for better or for worse, to worlds far beyond the walls of our childhood bedrooms. We consume memes, YouTube videos, pornography, opinions, and blog posts relentlessly; in many ways, it is through online content that we are socialized. But where lies the tangible proof that this content has deeply affected us? The internet is a profoundly liminal space: it is where we offload our psyches onto one another, then watch them flow down the algorithmic stream into digital oblivion. In fact, it is a non-space. Pervasive, but ephemeral.
Toronto-based artist Julia de Ruiter, fresh out of OCAD’s Drawing and Painting program, is part of a new frontier of artists bringing the internet’s post-modern absurdity into the fine art tradition. Her recent show at OCAD’s GradEx, titled “Touch Grass,” offered beautifully rendered oil paintings of the memes and references many of us wish we’d forgotten. Her work has found great popularity online as well, a real meta moment. We sat down with Julia to discuss her work and how it addresses the impact of the internet on our generation’s socialization process, ranging from incels to discord kittens.
To start, tell me about your relationship with the internet growing up. Give me the run-down!
So my mom’s a widow and I grew up in a single parent household. So that kind of required me to get an iPod earlier than most so I could stay in touch with my mom. When I was walking to and from school by myself, that was like my gateway drug into the online world. It all kind of started with Minecraft, and I would play on my phone, and then I eventually begged my mom to let me start playing on our family computer. And then I started meeting people online. I had an Instagram account where I would take screenshots of myself in-game and post them online. And then I started talking to people who were older than me online on Skype and Kik, and then through Instagram DMs as well. And that slowly creeped into my life: at school, I would be texting these people who lived across the world. My mom found out, and I got in a lot of trouble, because obviously talking to strangers online is… you don’t want your kid doing it. I mean, I wouldn’t. She freaked out… but my desire to connect online never really went away. And then I started getting into anime, and I started making anime edits. There’s a whole community on Discord, and that’s when I started really talking to some really scary men.
Were you a Discord kitten yourself?!
Thankfully, no. So I went back into my logs, and I was trying to find chat messages, but the main guy that I was friends with got exposed for being a pedophile, and so he deleted all of his chat logs, he disabled all his accounts and everything. I didn’t realize that this was so fucked up at the time, but he’d profess his love to me and I’d be like, “Oh, thank you… like, okay.” [The affection] was really not reciprocated, but it was definitely happening.
Do you think your series “Touch Grass” is an ode to your childhood?
Absolutely. I think that I never really fit in as a kid and I had a lot of different friend groups, but it wasn’t until high school where I solidified my identity. I was like, You know what? I am just weird. I like weird things, and let’s just embrace it. I think a lot of [my work] is just commemorating that the weird stuff happened. But, you know, it’s also part of who I am and who a lot of people are, too, which is awesome as well.
A lot of the memes and moments that circulate in your work are from incel culture. What about this type of male gooner gamer character appeals to you? What about the incel do you find fascinating?
I think that there’s such a taboo that surrounds them and it’s so violent and graphic and really, really scary. Like, it scares me for my future and, if I ever have kids, my children’s future. There’s this new wave of contemporary red pill male culture that’s so integrated with sex and technology, and I feel like a lot of people are afraid to admit how much technology influences our view on sex. That’s a pill that hasn’t been swallowed, I think, by a lot of people. A lot of men are obsessed with the idea of power and control. And I think that it’s kind of funny because, well it’s not funny, but I think that porn holds power over these men. They’re actually submitting to porn. But their whole ideology centered around controlling women and all that. So I think they don’t really realize what’s controlling them.
So then why would you choose to paint these men?
It’s a call out almost. It’s hard for me to fathom their ideology. I posted a video [of my art], and this guy commented, “I hate that you women are always getting into male spaces.” And I’m like, “Okay, thank you! You actually hit the nail on the head with that one! That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.” I like poking holes in their world and calling them out. Like sure, this is your “community,” but at the end of the day, you’re spewing hate and it impacts us [girls] first-hand. So I think a lot of my interest in [incel culture] is that I think these behaviours a
re ridiculous, but also deeply concerning. A lot of it is me trying to come to terms with my relationship with men and how my experience talking to these like incels and stuff like that have affected my personal relationships and the way that I view men as a whole.
I wanted to ask you about representation in oil painting and what we choose to depict or omit. A lot of your work depicts a dark part of the internet we’d like to maybe forget. So why do you choose to paint these kind of weird or unsavory or silly things into permanence — take something so abject and make it an oil painting?
I think oil paint is super serious, and there’s an elitist high culture that surrounds oil paint. And I think digital culture is such a low form of content and medium that bridging that gap between these two spaces allows people to really sit with the image and the content for way longer than they would have if it was just digitally on their phone. And even for me, through painting them, it brings back so many memories and all of a sudden I have 13, 15 paintings in my exhibition. I also never want to paint anything that I didn’t experience, or that is not true to myself.
Tell me about your influences a bit. I would describe your artwork as very ironic and post modern. Are there any artists, thinkers or writers who have really influenced your artwork?
Throughout creating my thesis project “Touch Grass,” I was reading this book called Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates. It’s an incredible book that really shaped my whole practice. She talks about incels and then pick-up artists as well. Reading that helped ground me in the fact that this is not just a North American issue, this is a global issue. There are hubs of men in Australia, in Asia, and they all gather to talk about how to pick up women on the street. My book is annotated with various tabs everywhere, I was writing in my sketchbook as I was reading, writing in the margins, everything’s all color coordinated. I would just keep on referencing back to that. Every time I’d read the book, I’d come up with a new idea and sketch a little thumbnail of what I want to paint next in the margins of the book.
And in terms of actual visual artists, I recently got invited to like this Instagram group chat of all these people who are like from all around, whose artwork is also commenting on some similar issues as me, such as online spaces and growing up with the internet. Some names include Andy DeLapp (@andy.delapp), Angel Lovecraft (@angel_lovecraft), Bun (@00.1bun), and Piero Roque (@ternitys). Talking with them and engaging with them has been really, really cool. A lot of them do like airbrushing as well, which I think is really fascinating as a medium. It’s great to be able to talk with like minded artists.
Have you noticed that your work defies expectations or norms in the contemporary art landscape? What have people’s reactions to your work been?
I had never shown any of this work up until GradEx, so it was my first time really gauging people’s reactions outside of social media. And I really, really, like, enjoyed talking with people about it. A lot of people would come in and instantly connect with one of the images. Honestly, it filled my cup so much that I wasn’t alone in [my experience on the internet]. Obviously, I’m not alone, but way more people understood and actually wanted to talk to me about their own experiences. We shared this kind of exchange of online culture, this gross stuff, and it made me think, you know, maybe this is more important than what I thought it was originally.
And I think that having images that people connect with gives them that easier barrier to entry into the art world, which I really enjoy. People were like, “Finally, some art that I understand!” Just lots of smiles and laughter. People liked my search bar paintings and they were posing in front of the “Am I gay?” quiz like, “Oh that was so me!” I just really like being able to engage with millennials and also Gen Z people. But then there’s, Gen Alpha kids too, and they’ll also ask me why I painted Meaty Michael. I love that as well.
Do you think people just don’t laugh enough in the art world?
Yeah! Like oh my God I love making people laugh, it fuels me so much. My work is serious, but also you don’t have to take it seriously if you don’t want to. Laughter is what makes life more bearable. I mean, whenever I’m nervous I laugh, it’s like a coping mechanism. Being classically trained, no one expects to walk into a gallery and see a meme on the wall, and there’s a joy in that. It’s kind of unexpected. And that’s part of my issue: I keep going to all these gallery openings and I love everyone, but no one wants to laugh with me in the gallery. And I’m like, “Come on! Not everything needs to be so serious.”
In your opinion, what is the role of fine art in a world where culture is overwhelmingly produced in this digital landscape, through memes and short videos and mass produced images?
I think that traditional art is more important now, in a way. Maybe not more important, but I think that there’s more of a need for it now than probably ever. I am scared about the way that we are drifting into everything being super digital… while [the internet] is so important for my practice, I feel like it’s easier to connect and really engage with the world around you in person. There’s this barrier when you’re not face to face with someone; there is connection, but is it an authentic connection? I don’t know.
I personally see your work as kind of the work of a historian or archivist, because you’re taking these really niche images that so many of us have seen but are now almost lost to time and solidifying them in an oil painting. When you approached your own work, I wonder if that’s ever how you saw your practice — as archiving the internet?
Yeah, absolutely. I realized there may be some collage elements and distortion elements in my work, but a lot of it is really a replica, it’s very representational. There’s not a lot of other outside things going on, it’s usually just like one image by itself. So yes, I think a lot of it is just archiving the medium, archiving the internet.
Milena Pappalardo is a writer and artist based in Toronto and Montreal. She completed her Hon. Bachelor in Political Science at the University of Toronto. She loves to write about the political and psychoanalytic undercurrents of fashion, art and culture.