Slimesunday American , b. 1991
Mike Parisella aka Slimesunday is a viral collage artist who constructs surreal, often unsettling compositions out of photographs to broach questions of censorship, consumerism, and sexuality.
Inspired by the form of women’s bodies, the artist creates cohesive narrative images that are both grotesque and playful in their physicality. Evolving from his past practice of sourcing images from the internet, his series of work entitled What the Fork?, which debuted at Philips,, used original images. Because of the prevalence of nudity and sexual imagery, his works are often removed from his popular Instagram profile for “violating community guidelines”. In response, he incorporates tropes of censorship like blurring and pixelation into his practice to trick the algorithm and criticize the arbitrary rules governing nudity and sexuality online. Dancing on the edge of acceptability, he is committed to creating thought-provoking artworks that convey his messages.
“Beautiful and grotesque are innate opposites, but when you combine them into one composition, the image somehow works,” Slimesunday told Penthouse. “I get a lot of comments saying, ‘This is gross, but I like it.’ That statement itself shouldn’t make sense, but oddly it does.”