Sarah Bentley Art

This is a satirical piece, a comment on various aspects of “internet culture”. Reddit, a website or forum, claims to be the “Front Page of the Internet”. Predating Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, Reddit remains popular with a strong user base. Cats, on the internet, on Reddit especially, are treated with a strange reverence. We have “Caturday”, aka on Saturday, dedicated to pictures of cats. Many of the early memes, shaping and reflecting today’s internet culture, involved cats such as “Can Haz Cheezeburger”, “Ceiling Cat is Watching You”, and continue to this day with “Grumpy Cat” whose death was front page news on Reddit, and Maru, who in 2016 was the most watched cat on YouTube. A woman dressed in the colors of the Madonna, complete with halo, cradles the one universally lovedcreature the internet: a kitten. This painting comments on how, in this internet connected world, millions of strangers have elevated kittens to a new global totem, an icon of a wired world.