HOT GIRL SH*T A Conversation with Casey Kauffmann BY LAUREN GUILFORD
“Who is She?” GIF installation, 2020, drawing, video and app manipulation, various monitors and tablets; photo by Jackie Castillo.
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Casey Kauffmann is a hoarder of cyber content. Her image archive is a black hole of digital debris, infinitely consuming, tearing apart, and spitting out images—a spaghettification of visual culture. Kauffmann is known for her digital collages that populate her Instagram page, @uncannysfvalley. These assemblages are strange, fragmented manipulations of a visual language that Kauffmann continuously rearranges and reimagines. A manic hyper-femininity runs through her work, combining asses, baby animals, and the latest photoshop filter to disorient and warp popular significations of women. Her digital practice also informs her drawing practice, which serves as another filter to contort and subvert constructs of femininity. I had a conversation with Kauffmann about coming of age in San Fernando Valley, the construction of identity on and offline, and the current state of digital art. LAUREN GUILFORD: How did growing up in Los Angeles in the ’90s shape your practice? CASEY KAUFFMANN: My dad worked for Mattel for 30 years making Barbie commercials, and my mom is a former pageant queen from the valley—I have a picture of her in the Hollywood parade wearing a fur bikini. I also have three sisters, so I grew
