For this year's 18@8 Mirror, Mirror on the wall the main idea stems from the state of the world today and how social media has changed people and the way they view themselves.

The idea or concept of narcissism all began with the Greek myth of Narcissus who in a nutshell, was so enamored by his own reflection in the water, eventually bringing upon his death, as a result of him being completely unable to take his eyes off of himself.

In the world that we are living in today with the rise and growth of social media and networking, narcissism or traits tied to seem ever more prevalent in most individuals. It seems like we’ve come to a point where self-validation is achieved through one’s popularity on social networking sites and forums. One particular study has even presented the fact that, “young people are just completely convinced that in order to succeed they have to believe in themselves or go all the way to being narcissistic”.

To this end each artist has been asked to explore the idea of self-love (be it narcissism: egotism, vanity, pride, selfishness, grandiosity, erotic gratification derived from admiration of one’s own physical or mental attributes, self-adornment, obsession with perfection, acceptance from one's peers, the list goes on) and come up with one major work which would reflect this theme.

This year’s list of 18@8 artists are: Ivan Lam, Anurendra Jegadeva, Choy Chun Wei, Yau Bee Ling, Wong Chee Meng, Hamid Hadi, Azliza Ayob, Ilham Fadlym, Zulkilfi Yuosff, Sean Lean, Cheng Yen Pheng and Kim Ng.

Image: © Wei-Ling Contemporary