Pick-up Lines

Vera Klimentyeva

A pick-up line is a conversation opener with the intent of engaging an unfamiliar person for dating, romance or sex. Pick-up lines range from straight forward conversation starters, like introducing oneself, asking for common interest to more elaborate attempts including humour or flattery.
Pick-up lines are also used by NLP trainers, who try to persuade their clients that the benefits of NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) will help to overcome problems, increase the personal performance and self-optimization. NLP uses perceptual, behavioral and communication techniques to make it easier for people breaking through conventional patterns.

Vera Klimentyeva did a 10-months research on different dating sites (Tinder, Happn, Bumble, Hater etc.), meeting more than 50 men from 19 countries. She summarized dates and online conversations and processed her experiences in a blog. Talking about behaviors and demeanor of dating partners was infectious for many followers and spread like a wild fire.
After 10 months experience she decided to choose the best quotes and produced series of silk screen print cards ironically called “Pickup Lines”, which she will present at her solo show at 12-14 contemporary.

For emphasizing the messages she is displaying a photography from her Living Doll Series (2014), which she has never shown till now. She was preparing herself like a Barbie Doll, definitely an icon of the late capitalist understanding of femininity and as well an obvious warning for regressions in feminist issues. Her impact for this transformation was the uprising of the so-called «living doll trend» – a bizarre aspiration of teenage girls and young adults to resemble living dolls, what also brings them «likes» on social media or youtube, and turning some of them into real online-celebrities. Started in Asia, this trend is going global, causing either admiration or disgust.

ABOUT VERA KLIMENTYEVA

Vera Klimentyeva is a Russian researcher and visual artist focused on topics of identity, overidentification, religion and social role models. Her main tools are deconstruction and transformation. Seeking for explanations and answers to various questions in regard of nowadays‘ situations of different contents, she often deals with such concepts as home, cultural heritage, unconditional love, spirituality, stereotypical national features and symbolism. Her favorite techniques are different forms of printmaking like silk-screen print, etching and woodcut, but she is doing digital collages and photography as well.