Aneesa Julmice b. 2001

Aneesa Julmice is a Haitian-American multidisciplinary artist based in New York. Her work is rooted in an exploration of feminine existence in the digital age and shaped by her lived experiences as a woman of color navigating technology’s gaze. Drawing from a traditional oil painting practice, Julmice began an exploration of digital media while earning her BFA in Interactive Media Arts from NYU Tisch.

Julmice uses portraiture to push digital tools to the very limits of painterly realism, intentionally mimicking the depth and texture of her oil painting practice. Her process merges traditional techniques with digital experimentation, creating images that blur the boundaries between mediums. By printing her digital works on paper and reintroducing paint, she blurs the line between mediums and reinforces the idea that a painter remains a painter, regardless of the tools they use.

My work investigates the consequential phenomena that occur from being observed online, such as internet doxxing, parasocial relationships, eroticism, and overconsumption. Acting as an observer, I produce artworks that attempt to visualize the often discomforting and disconcerting nature of the internet while acknowledging the total dependence we have on it. Likewise, I work to explore the realities of being a woman of color existing online. Women have to navigate the internet like a minefield, at times needing to conceal their race and gender to be afforded a peaceful online existence while utilizing the accessible nature of establishing a presence that is empowering to women and their divinity.

I am most fascinated by the lyrical dance and complex performance women navigate in order to use the internet safely. My subjects are most often female figures, often nude, whose identities are obscured by latex masks. Amongst the figures are pieces of technology such as cameras and screens that tell the narrative of social surveillance. These masks work to portray anonymity, blurring the line between an individual’s true nature and how they are portrayed on the internet. In the case of female bodies, my work seeks to understand the erotic, reframing it to be a sense of self-exploration for women that resonates in every fiber of their being. My work most deeply resonates with the ponderings of Audre Lorde, who wrote in “The Uses of the Erotic”, “The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling.”

In conversations surrounding my work, I often speak of innocence and childlike whimsy that reminds me of my first introduction to new technologies, and I urge for an untainted view of latex masks and the nude female form. Only then can the true complexities of this reality come to light.

Parasocial relationships: one-sided relationships, where one person extends emotional energy, interest, and time, and the other party, the persona, is completely unaware of the other's existence...