archiving the lost artwork of the world wide web

EXHIBITION STATEMENT

In the late 1990s to early 2000s, GeoCities served as a digital library of webpages and self-expression built by the early users of the World Wide Web. Its pages decorated with kitschy wallpapers, pixelated GIFS, and unique fonts and buttons reflect the time period and the visionaries who designed them with different levels of knowledge of HTML coding. However, when GeoCities was shut down in 2009, an entire era of grassroots digital culture was lost.

Fortunately, many of these abandoned web pages have been resurrected through the Internet Archive, and a project called restorativland has created a Geocities gallery easily accessible to anyone. In many ways this work is similar to archaeological excavation, unburying a lost culture with a bold aesthetic, idiosyncratic dialect, and excessive use of punctuation and ellipses.

In curating this online exhibition, I searched through personal interest and gallery pages on GeoCities and discovered digital artwork and animations, photography, painting, poetry, and more that is likely seen by little to none. This exhibition explores themes of nostalgia, preservation, and the democratization of art in the digital age through a deinstitutionalized lens. In viewing these works, I challenge viewers to think about the impermanence of digital artwork and how technology, art, and aesthetics have changed over the past 30 years.