SWIPED CIRMUSTANCES

2018

For the series Swiped Circumstances Kruithof used numerous images of confiscated weapons photographed together with the identity cards of the weapon owners, which she found on the Instagram account of the American Transport Security Administration (TSA). The social media manager of the TSA blurs these identity cards before posting the photographs on their Instagram. Kruithof enlarged these blurred identity cards in order to print them on transparent natural latex. She wrinkled, folded and pressed the prints into transparent acrylic boxes which resemble the plasticized character of the original identity cards.

The sculptures render the portrayed individual as anonymous, with a wink to post human emotionality, and the work raises questions about the integrity of online profiling and privacy violation in the name of surveillance and safety. Face, eye or breast gel masks hint at objects made to relax, comfort, support or heal; while our identities are reduced to a material reference to our way of coping with malfunction and degradation. These portrait-like sculptures could be seen as new identities in which the usual partitions between nature and culture, human and machine, reality and fiction, come undone.

EXHIBITIONS

08.02.–20.09.2020 PERSONA EVERYWARE, Le Lait: Centre d’Art Contemporain, Albi, France 
10.07.–03.082019 Unsupported Message Format, Galerie Valeria Cetraro
07.–11.02.2018 Swiped Circumstances (solo) Valeria Cetraro at Material Art FairMexico City