The Dressing Room

The Dressing Room is Leah Schrager’s first AI video work. Her shift to AI-driven art has coincided with leaving New York City for the Sonoran Desert, becoming a mother, and wrapping up the art projects of her youth. This 2-minute-24-second video draws on images and narratives from her life. 

Schrager opens with an empty old-school ballet studio—a symbol of her and many little girls’ dreams of being a performer, the kind of performance class found even in small US towns. As the narrative unfolds, multiple selves and avatars emerge—bits of what where and are, vestiges of what could have been lingering across the internet. The woman dancing on a device evokes OnaArtist, a celebrity-as-art-practice project Schrager created that now has 5 million Instagram followers and remains online as a dancing hologram (she has not created new content for it in five years). 

The video culminates in an art gallery displaying Schrager’s artworks across life phases and mediums, where she turns to photograph the viewer. The video weaves a fragmented narrative of online selves, inviting the viewers to reflect on their own aspirations, youth, life journey, and digital fingerprints.