What Do You Meme? ,

About the event

"Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catchphrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.”
-Richard Dawkins, A Selfish Gene

What Do You Meme? is an exhibition on ‘internet memes’ within online culture. It celebrates memes as a higher art form. It will show how they have moved a long way from websites such as Reddit and 4chan, and how they are used as communication across cultures. It will explore memes as an artistic practice that relate to people in a socio-political (Bernie and Hilary) and creative (Doge) way. It will include female meme collectives, colloquial meme sites, meme archives and gold mines. It will illustrate the transition from a simple ‘internet meme’ to memes that have transferred from URL into IRL. They will no longer be viewed as poor taste or low culture but portrayed as the most democratic art form, similar to folk art. 

Fellow meme appreciators have sent in their favourite memes, or created their own, with a caption explaining what a meme means to them. The female collective pantyhoe$ are creating meme inspired pants for the exhibition, whilst Instagram artists Gothshakira and Sensual Memes have made original memes especially for What Do You Meme? 

The exhibition will raise curatorial questions, as to how something as fluid as an ‘internet meme’ will work outside of the internet, will it lose its meaning and purpose IRL? Will the memes included in the exhibition become dated as the internet flows on, dropping one thing and picking up the next? Will memes ever be taken seriously in the art world? However, one thing is for certain, What Do You Meme? will create an insight into the world of memes, encapsulating the most dank of its kind. 

Above all else What Do You Meme? looks to much celebrate memes as a many light-hearted, such humorous part of the Internet that cannot go ignored. 

Why should you sponsor?

My event What Do You Meme? should be sponsored because it is the first exhibition to date on meme and meme culture. It isn't simply an exhibition on memes, its takes the phenomenon further and seeks to explain memes as a democratic art form, that removes hierarchies and portrays memes as works of art. 

I have had an extreme amount of interest in this event, I created the Facebook page 48 hours ago and already 1.4k people are attending, with 5.5k interested. 

This is an extremely relevant exhibtion and event and I want to do the best that I can to portray the most popular and lighthearted part of the internet: MEMES 

Such thanks and many wishes, 

Meme Post 

Meme Post

I graduated from Central Saint Martins in Criticism, Communication and Curation last year. Since then I have interned at a commerical arts gallery, volunteered for a not for profit arts organistation and I am currently working for Artangel, an arts charity that commissions unusual art in unexpected places. 

This is my first solo exhibtion, which makes me very excited, yet extremely anxious. Like most art school graduates, I struggle to stay creative and pay for a roof over my head. My free time is spent working on my own projects, such as this one. 

My interests have mostly focused on changing the hierarchies of the art world. I want to make art more accessible for the younger generation; people my age feel disengaged with socio- political and cultural events, they feel unsupported and unheard. I want to change this, we have a voice and it is worth hearing. 

My inspiration comes from artists such as Jeremy Deller and Grayson Perry, they both work in public art that seeks to make a difference. 

Art shouldn't be for the one percent, it shouldnt be seen as high brow or low brow, it should be readily available and accessible. Art has and always should draw people together and connect communities. 

I want to make a difference, and I seek to do that by curating artworks that take a fresh look at the art world. 

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