Instagram: A Symposium

This event has ended.

Social media platform. Billion-dollar company. Home of fitspiration, avocado brunches, and over-filtered sunsets. Instagram is the place where we share our lives and peek into the lives of others—friends, family, influencers, celebrities. But what does it mean to encounter photographs as part of Instagram’s endless feed? How does this platform shape how we think about contemporary photography as a daily practice and an art form?

Join us as we discuss Instagram as a key context for contemporary art and culture. This half-day public symposium will feature a host of expert speakers, including art historians and media scholars, in conversation with visual artists from South Wales and beyond. Through a series of roundtables and panel discussions, we’ll consider selfies as a new genre of portrait photography, delve into innovative historical or artistic projects developed on Instagram, and explore how practicing artists make use of the platform.

Confirmed speakers include Alix Beeston (Cardiff University), Bronwen Colquhoun (National Museum Cardiff), Huw Alden Davies (artist), Cadence Kinsey (University College London), Alexandra Kingston-Reese (University of York), Alexandra Georgakopoulou (University College London), Michal Iwanowski (artist), and Celia Jackson (University of South Wales).

This symposium coincides with the National Museum Cardiff’s Photography Season and the final weekend of Artist Rooms: August Sander, an exhibition of some of the most important photographic portraiture in the medium’s history. A guided tour of the exhibition is included in the ticket price, allowing participants to reflect on how digital culture connects to the history of photography—inside and outside of the museum.

Presented in partnership with Image Works: Research and Practice in Visual Culture and sponsored by Cardiff University.

This is an English-language event but we are happy to provide Welsh-language facilitation. In order for us to arrange a facilitator, please e-mail events@museumwales.ac.uk as soon as possible, and at least a week before the event.