JULIAN MERCER

Full Name: Julian Anthony Mercer
Born: 1992, Manchester, UK
Current Base: Copenhagen, Denmark

Education:

BA in Photography & Visual Culture, Central Saint Martins, London (2014)

MA in Media Art, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen (2018)

Specialisation:
Julian Mercer focuses on expanded portraiture and post-human identity. His practice involves kinetic installations, immersive projections, and photographic manipulations that stretch and fragment the human figure. Using experimental camera movements, algorithmic distortion, and light-based sculpture, Mercer redefines the portrait as a site of transition — between clarity and dissolution, intimacy and distance, body and signal.

Exhibitions & Collaborations:

Afterimages: Blurred Futures, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark (2019)

Collaboration with sound artist Ryoji Ikeda on Distorted Headspace (2021)

Ghost Networks, FACT Liverpool (2023)

Critical Themes:

The body as glitch in a machine-driven society

Anonymity, data, and erasure of the “self” in digital portraiture

The aesthetics of speed and psychological blur

Current Work:
Mercer is developing Kinetic Portrait Lab, a modular system for capturing movement-based identities in immersive live performance contexts.

Instagram: