Unknown Language

A personal essay on exposure, auto-fiction, internet feminism and the anxiety epidemic. Last year Olivia Sudjic published Sympathy, a novel about surveillance and connection in the internet age. If a debut novel is written by a woman, it is often read and discussed as if it were a memoir. Suddenly Sudjic found herself shoved under the microscope, subject to same surveillance apparatus she had dissected in her novel. In this incisive personal essay, Olivia Sudjic draws on her experience to examine the damaging expectations that attend any young female artist, as well the strategies by which they might be evaded.