This exhibition is a Tumblr-inspired, neo-noir tale of modern girlhood

Tumblr aesthetics from the early 2010s continue to stage a major comeback, fuelled by TikTok and an insatiable thirst for the past. Pastel tones, soft grunge, vintage nostalgia and indie sleaze – these iconic visuals that once defined an entire generation are now being reimagined in Obsidian Upset, an exhibition centred around the short film of the same name, written and directed by Lucia Farrow and Mila Rowyszyn, two best friends and artists “pretending to be filmmakers”, they tell Dazed. 

#ObsidianUpset kicks off with a hazy silhouette of a girl riding a horse, rocking back and forth as her mouth curves into a smile. In a flash, the scene skips to an impersonal bedroom, where the protagonist – a vain blogger named Beanie Boylston – lies on silky white bedsheets, double-tapping her phone. Manicured nails, pouty lips and a steady stream of selfies – it’s a ritual. She posts one to her dedicated followers, captioned “wearing my obsidian necklace today <3 fuck mercury in retrograde”. She checks herself in the mirror, and then the doorbell rings. 

A mysterious delivery girl hands over a sponsored package from a CBD company, requesting that Boylston shoot the product in the Californian desert. She ropes in her best friend – the horse-obsessed girl from the opening scene – to help with capturing her best angles, but after downing the CBD liquid undiluted, Boylston’s world dissolves into a fever dream of content. Her phone screen morphs into oozy black fluid, and the bright desert light darkens into something out of a horror film, overflown with a mashup of 2012 Tumblr aesthetics, iPhone imagery, GIFs and analogue film visuals. “A psycho-sexual neo-noir that tails the fallen heroines of our generation, this is a modern-day tale of narcissus,” says Farrow and Rowyszyn. “#ObsidianUpset acts as an archive for the phenomena of online personas, preserving the horror of being a woman today and the paranoia with youth, ageing, conflicting sexuality and wellness that comes with it.”

“#ObsidianUpset acts as an archive for the phenomena of online personas, preserving the horror of being a woman today and the paranoia with youth, ageing, conflicting sexuality and wellness that comes with it” – Lucia Farrow and Mila Rowyszyn

Three years in the making, Farrow and Rowyszyn birthed the project during their final year at Central Saint Martins in 2022. Farrow sculpted the script and directed scenes, while Rowyszyn shaped the film’s hauntingly cinematic visuals. “As best friends, we also wanted to make something that spoke directly about female friendships and relationships – the confusion, closeness and love that comes with navigating early womanhood,” they tell Dazed. Growing up with early access to Instagram during Tumblr’s golden age, the duo became obsessed with how girls choose to immortalise themselves online. “The preservation of self and beauty through documentation also lends itself directly to the film. In the pivotal puddle scene towards the end, The Blogger speaks to herself through the black obsidian mirror oil spill: ‘I’m an artefact. In this, I’ll be forever 22’. We wanted to portray how, through digital media, women become artefacts by documenting themselves and posting it for the world to see. In this scene, our blogger-turned-actress Beanie Boylston will always be 22 years old.” 

“The ‘online girl’ is a part of art history: our whole generation of girls endlessly repeat their own image, blending together into one artefact duplicating each other’s posts and thoughts” – Farrow and Rowyszyn

Since debuting the film at Des Bains’ gallery in July, #ObsidianUpset has transcended the screen, dripping into the gallery space in an exhibition curated by Kollektiv Collective. Featuring women who are born in the same time period – who each documents themselves and other women in their work – the show includes a photographic ceramic tablet from Farrow, photos printed on a mirror from Rowyszyn, pieces from LA-based photographers Chessa Subbiondo and Stolen Besos, plus a painting from London-based Elsa Rouy, wittingly titled “Obsidian Upskirt” – a glossy, pastel-tinted reimagining of a still from the film’s climax. “In my practice, I use fleshy, muted or darker colours and for this I switched it up for a much more soft and girly aesthetic,” says Rouy, who replicated the same light lilac and blue tones from the film. “To me, the painting I made is more than just an upskirt; it feels like an organic form that blurs between body and shape. It’s erotic but also nothing at all.” 

Through its layered mediums – including a post on Tumblr itself – Obsidian Upset reflects a generation of women who grew up online, grappling with the anxieties of youth and self-perception. “The ‘online girl’ is a part of art history: our whole generation of girls endlessly repeat their own image, blending together into one artefact duplicating each other’s posts and thoughts,” Farrow and Rowyszyn conclude. “Our film exists now on Tumblr forever, released into the abyss of spam and self-repeated images, it will stay there, immortalised like the girls in our film and like the girls in Rouy’s paintings or Farrow’s ceramic tablets. Our film exists, we made it, and it captured our coming-of-age and our minds at the time. It will forever act as an archive for us, and hopefully other women will see themselves and that as well.”

Obsidian Upset is on view at Des Bains Gallery in London until 16 August 2024