Real Girlfriend is a performance-based body of work. Conceived in AR, the videos satirize existing female archetypes created from the male gaze, representing an amalgam of women from the virtual canon.

Real Girlfriend excavates the affective dissonance between imagined intimacy and mediated presence. In this performance, a projected avatar—animated through motion capture and live input—liaises with the audience in real time, embodying the tension between physical absence and virtual longing. The work reframes the ‘girlfriend’ construct as a speculative interface: a companion simultaneously uncanny and relational, designed to probe the politics of care, presence, and expectation. Real Girlfriend functions as a counterpoint to ritual gravitas—a delicate experiment in intimacy, virtual embodiment, and relational rupture across distance.

‘Domesticada’ at JO-HS, Mexico City 2022
Curated by Elisabeth Johs
Pearlyn Lii, “Huozhu, Real Girlfriend” 2021; documented by Nico Croes, courtesy of nonstudio, New York.

Collected by Michael Brown of Speaklow NYC