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This new installation made for the Tanks traces the effects of digital culture on how we construct identity.

Cast bronze sculptures of a woman in different states of transformation are mounted on top of speakers, which act as plinths. Moving lights spot each figure, triggering sounds that warp, distort, harmonise and repeat. Projected on the wall is a film showing footage shot by the artist, referencing flashbacks from the artist’s childhood, women in post-surgery recovery, memes, turntablists and Black-owned strip clubs. Oyiri splices this with found digital imagery of cosmetic surgery, historical artworks and cartoons. The film includes images of Sarah Baartman from 19th-century prints. Baartman was a South African Khoikhoi woman who was brought to London in 1810 by a British showman who exhibited her to paying audiences around the UK and Ireland. Flesh and sound are both treated as sculptural in this looping performance of object, audio and light.

At the climactic peak of the loop, coloured lights start to sync with electronic musician Squarepusher’s 1997 track A Journey to Reedham (7am mix). The frenetic percussion and vivid melodic lines of this high-energy composition aim to evoke feelings of disorientation and exhilaration. Oyiri likens the music’s convergence of rhythm, repetition and rupture to how contemporary experience can feel.

Oyiri uses tools from both DJing and experimental writing in her art practice, such as the cut-up technique and fragmentation. With this new work, she draws similarities between these artistic tools and those used in cosmetic surgery and online image-making technologies. Drawing on her personal experiences of the entertainment industry, the artist reflects on contemporary beauty standards and how the internet stimulates endless self-reconstructions. Oyiri asks: ‘In a hyperconnected society, where the image is perpetually staged and corrected, how do the virtual and the material come together in the quest for the ideal body? How do aesthetic practices influence our perception of reality and desire?’