London-based artist Emma Alvin’s The Sun is Just Another Star is a joyous photo dump packed with sad girls, clowns and coquettes
The first time I encountered Emma Alvin’s work she sent a giant Bichon Frisé dog made of tulle strutting down the halls of CSM as part of her 2022 graduation performance, The Sun is Just Another Star. Adding to the theatrics was a person in an ostrich suit with hula hoops swinging around their neck and a cast of passed-out fairies decked out in sparkly wings and tutus. Fusing “fun, play, cringe, drama and chaos”, the show was a delightful concoction of internet theatrics brought into the IRL – “I had been studying the psychology and unlying social dynamics of sad girl online culture coupled with the concept of cuteness,” reflects Alvin, who’s immortalised the show in an upcoming photo book.
From its bright pink cover to the dazzling snapshots of star-spangled actors and Tumblr-coded girlies in face paint, The Sun is Just Another Star is a joyous time capsule that explores the nostalgia of girlhood memories through the frenzied layout of a teenage scrapbook. Featuring photography by art director and CSM alumni Harry Freegard, leafing through the book is akin to scrolling through the Instagram feed, with each page akin to a post or photo dump that may or may not be related to what came before it. “When you flip through the pages, I think this makes complete sense,” she agrees. “There is no one defining story.”
“I am drawn to exploring the fine line between common sense and insanity, and how that links to social powers and collective consciousness,” says Dame. “This project is rooted in the philosophy of clowning. A celebration of the beauty in failure and the sacrifice of self-pride (cringe/embarrassment) in the pursuit of connection to others (laughter).”
Drawing parallels between the historical Pierrot and online figures such as the sad girl and coquette, Dame explores themes of online girlhood and performativity through these “cute but psycho” archetypes, further illustrated through a selection of poetry written by Nina Kihlborg and Hedda Röök, who created a Tumblr page with digital snippets and coquette quotes from across the internet, which they collaged and twisted as dialogue for the performance.
“My entire life has been signposted by female Pierrot types, Cassie from Skins, Lana Del Rey – sad and hopeless romantic clowns. The project is based on this notion, and celebrates it,” she expands. “Taking these subjects offline reveals that contemporary aesthetic movements such as the ‘Sad Girl’ or ‘Cute but Psycho’ cosplay on apps like TikTok and Tumblr are merely modernised conceptions of traditional theatre play like the romantic clown mime and puppeteering.”
Alvin has since gone on to event design for partygoers and create balloon art for TikTok videos commissioned by Balenciaga, which proves there’s serious demand for fun frivolity. “The theatre piece was all about the cute and zany. I think all my work looks to this dynamic in some way or another and how it relates to icons of both high and low culture,” she concludes. “My work is influenced by whimsical (absurdities) as well as new media, and the way that it uses storytelling and dramatics as important social cues for communicating. I am taking fun, nonsense and play highly serious.”
The Sun is Just Another Star is out now