Faculty of Art

Photography

Fionn McDonnell

They're safe for kids now

Image of a young woman licking a popsicle filled with cigarette butts and cigarette ash. While this isn't a complete recreation of an image, the inspiration came from a photo I saw of someone who inserted a fried egg into a popsicle mold, making an egg popsicle. I wanted to work with the idea of knowing what you put in your body, and how we are often tricked by companies into consuming things that do more harm than good.

“Jester's Privilege is an ongoing series that explores internet meme culture and its evolving role in society. Growing up with the internet as a constant backdrop, my sense of taste and perception was shaped by an ecosystem vastly different from that of previous generations. As I navigated online spaces—image boards, forums, and early social media—I kept stumbling upon photographs that defied logic or conventional meaning. These weren’t traditional memes or viral content, but something more elusive. They were strange, absurd, and inexplicably captivating, and not just for me. What began as a niche interest soon became a broader cultural phenomenon, These images eventually became known in internet vernacular as “cursed images,” the name coming from a Tumblr blog in 2015 that curated and canonized this emerging aesthetic. The cursed image is a type of visual that is unsettling, humorous, cryptic, due to its lack of context. These images exist in a space between art and content; they are products of human creativity, yet their viral spread aligns them with digital ephemera rather than intentional artistic expression. Unlike traditional internet content, which is often designed to drive engagement or promote a product, the cursed image resists commodification. Its meaning is fragile—any attempt to provide context disrupts its ambiguity, stripping it of its status. At the same time, its lack of clear intention makes it difficult for many to perceive as art. This duality presents a compelling contradiction: it is art by virtue of creation, yet it is dismissed as meaningless; it is content by virtue of circulation, yet it cannot be commercialized in the traditional sense.In Jester's Privilege, I engage with this paradox by recreating and recontextualizing moments of internet culture, drawing attention to the space where art and content blur. The series highlights the tension between meaning and meaninglessness, intention and happenstance, prompting viewers to consider whether certain digital artifacts can exist beyond conventional definitions of art and content—or whether they belong to an entirely new category altogether.The term "Jester’s Privilege" refers to the historical right of court jesters to mock and critique the king without fear of persecution, granted on the basis that their words were ultimately seen as meaningless. This paradox—where the jester is both an entertainer and an advisor, both influential and inconsequential—mirrors the nature of the cursed image, simultaneously perceived as art and content, yet belonging fully to neither. This tension between meaning and meaninglessness, significance and absurdity, is central to Jester's Privilege, inviting viewers to reconsider how we define creative expression in the digital age.”