A Curatorial Perspective of Two Objects
The Encyclopedia of Invisibility is a sculptural work by artist Tavares Strachan that features thousands of entries focused on historically marginalized individuals, places, and events. The Encyclopedia is a large compendium of research into subject matter and topics of often overlooked and hidden histories. This is a written and illustrated inverse of the Encyclopedia Britannica, functioning as Literature but also taking on the role of Sculpture.
Rotversteck (Hideout in Red) is Mayer H.’s is a site specific installation that uses Data Protection Patterns (DPP). Data Protection Patterns are patterns that are used to hide to hide personal information. The installation uses the "Rotversteck technique", familiar from school textbooks in which the answers are “hidden” in a red pattern. When looking in from the outside, red film on the glass windows makes it possible to view the hidden content of the artwork, previously obscured by the DPP, through erasure From the other side, viewers can only see an obscured red DPP pattern.
These two artworks both address key themes within the exhibition of invisibility and visibility, but approach them from very different perspectives. Strachan's The Encyclopedia of Invisibility attempts to make visible people, places and stories that have historically and structurally been made invisible through marginalization. Mayer H.’s Rotversteck (Hideout in Red) address legibility and invisibility in a playful way, making what is hidden less relevant and pointing to the limits of transparency.
Discussion Questions
- One of the three core sections of our exhibition is titled: "To Be Seen or Not to Be Seen: Social Justice, Dataveillance, and the Politics of Invisibility." Calling our attention to the myriad ways in which data is employed as a tool for economic, racial, and gender-based exploitation, artists and scientists in our exhibition are also subverting the technologies that are shaping our desires, decisions, and identities to transform the digital into a locus for social change, equality, and justice. To what extent can tools that were designed for subjugation and control be used towards liberatory ends?
- As our ever-more virtual existences render us physically invisible to one another, the aggressive data-mining of our online activities makes us unequally hyper-visual to a set of powerful corporate and state actors. What are the implications of the “data shadows” composed by aggregating our online activities, images, and DNA, and what can we learn from this new form of invisible portraiture?
- Busch’s lyrical 2019 paean to invisibility, How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency (Penguin Press), which explores connections between camouflaging strategies of the natural world, cutting-edge science, and social invisibility. “The impulse to escape notice is not about complacent isolation or senseless conformity, but about maintaining identity, autonomy and voice.” To what extent can invisibility offer useful frameworks for safety and autonomy?
Bibliographic References
