Visual Art
Visual Highlights
A selection of visual works from 2010–present. Click here for featured series Click here for personas
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Thought That Is Actually A Thought
Thought That Is Actually a Thought (2024–26) begins with photographs from my own life—images I have made and images in which I appear—which are reworked
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Loop of Self
Loop of Self (2024-26) continues Leah Schrager’s long-running exploration of self-representation by returning to the photographic archive of Ona Artist (2015–2020). Using AI, digital painting,
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Mom Life
Figures Museum Piece These artworks from 2024 are based on photographs that I have taken and/or appear in. I transform them using
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After an American Dream
After an American Dream (2020) explored what might come after An American Dream, the final chapter of the Ona Artist project. Set during the outbreak
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The Vanishing Image
The Vanishing Image is a series of increasingly abstract digital works exploring the figure through abstraction.
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Angles on a Woman
In the summer of 2019, I presented Angles on a Woman, my first live performance, at the Montauk Beach House as part of my solo
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Buy My Life
These works were created in 2018 and 2019 as Ona Artist entered the gallery. They include installation views, participatory works, and projects that brought the
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Manifestations
Manifestations (2019) is a series of photographs digitally painted on an iPad. Created as part of The Acceptable Woman, the works were exhibited at
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Numbers
Numbers (2017) is a series of works created from data generated by Ona Artist. Follower counts, comments, likes, screenshots, and other records of the project
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#ToysOnAPeach
Toys on a Peach (2017) is a series of photographs in which miniature objects are placed on my “peach” before being photographed. The images were
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Duets
These images were commissioned by Glamour magazine for their Summer of Sex 2017 series in 2017. I photographed myself alongside friends in a New York
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Nu Matrearchs
This essay was originally published as part of the online art show “Nu Matrearchs” as part of The Wrong Biennial. The Instagram Model as Art
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Almost Famous
These works were created as part of Ona Artist, primarily in 2017. They include promotional images, album artwork, digital experiments, and standalone artworks
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Under Erasure
Under Erasure (2017) is a series of digitally manipulated self-portraits exploring censorship and visibility. Faces and bodies are erased, mirrored, fragmented, and obscured until
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Self-Made Supermodels
On Being an Instagram Model as a New Form of DIY, Digital, Feminized Performance September 8, 2016 Click here to read the essay on Rhizome
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Painted
The works on this page were created in 2016 and 2017. They use photographs of myself originally created as part of the Ona Artist celebrity
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Infinity Selfie
Infinity Selfie (2016) is a series of recursive self-portraits created during Ona Artist. By repeating a single image onto itself, photographs that would not
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Ona Artist, 2015-2020
In 2015, I set out to create a celebrity as an art practice. The celebrity reached millions of followers on Instagram. She produced music, artworks,
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The Female Painter
Body Anxiety is an online exhibition that opened January 24, 2015. It made an unexpectedly strong impact and was highly discussed. See below for “The
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OnaGen
Essay on identity, authorship, and the emergence of the social media artist Introduction Written in the early years of Instagram—before I was even on the
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After the Photograph
After the Photograph (2013–2014) is a group of works based on photographs of myself. The first series began as physical photographs that were folded, wrapped,
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The Ona Experiments
During my MFA studies at Parsons, I developed a series of conceptual websites and online personas, including Free Girl, Devotology, ArtSexyStudio, Escart Girl, Painted O,
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Early Multimedia Works
These were my first multimedia works. Images from the Ona websites I developed during my MFA studies at Parsons were printed on my home printer
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Am I Not Art/ist?
On April 19, 2012, I was accepted into the West Chelsea Artists Open Studios. On May 1, 2012, I was removed from the event after
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Stolen
Stolen was my only sustained experiment with appropriated images and text. Having already begun making derivative works from photographs of myself, I wondered whether I
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My Modeling Portfolio
While working as a dancer and model around 2010, I realized something strange: the images of me didn’t belong to me. The photographers owned them.
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The Google Project – 2010-15
The Google Project (2010-2015) began after what I called an “internet accident.” In 2010, I unexpectedly became a viral public figure under the pseudonym Sarah
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Sarah White – Naked Therapy – 2010-15
Naked Therapy was an online social practice performance founded under the pseudonym Sarah White in 2010. Conducted through one-on-one video sessions, the project explored intimacy,
Visual Art
Phoems
Phoems was my first body of visual artwork. Created in 2009, the series combines photographs I had taken with short texts I had written directly