YouTuber VI 2026 – 21,5 x 40cm, oil, charcoal on canvas
YouTuber VI 2026 is a small, horizontal canvas that distils the entire creator–consumer dynamic into a single, suffocating frame. The figure is hunched forward, almost folded into the space, head bowed toward the microphone that is both tool and tether. The pose is intimate, almost confessional, yet it is performed: the mic is close to the mouth, the hands surrounding it express a tension that reads as both determination and entrapment. The face is rendered in oil with a soft, almost tender brutality, features emerging from layers of grey, black, and bruised ochre, the skin mottled with scraped-back passages that reveal the raw canvas beneath like exposed nerve.
The eyes are half-lidded, shadowed, focused inward or on an unseen screen; the mouth is open just enough to suggest speech, but the expression is unreadable, exhaustion, resolve, resignation, all at once. The background is a dense, almost claustrophobic field of charcoal and oil wash: dark, swirling marks that feel like feedback loops, comment streams, or the static of endless notifications. This is not a finished portrait; it is a live feed, a temporary capture, something that could be torn down or scrolled past at any moment.
The painting collapses the distance between broadcaster and audience. At the bottom right corner, there is an inset screen housing a tiny figure sketched inside it, it is also performing into the microphone while simultaneously being consumed by it.
The body leans into the act of speaking, but the speaking is also an act of self-consumption: the voice is fed back into the algorithm, monetised, dissected, ratioed, and the figure is left hollowed by the very process that gives it visibility. I am attempting to make contemporary portraits that directly refer to our digital political culture, the way we access content, how it is framed, how it is distributed, and how the attention economy plays into that.