Statement:

These days everybody is leading a life in a virtual world, where we establish profiles, store and share our data and get connected to people and information that would be impossible for us to access in real life. The Internet brings convenience and enlarges our capability, but at the same time it learns about us, at a rate and level that many people don’t realize. When Facebook and Youtube recommend us materials and videos that directly appeal to our interests, when our iPhones automatically backup everything onto Apple’s servers, when we click on “share my location” button whenever it pops up on our devices, we should be concerned about the fact that we are thoroughly exposed, kept track of and studied by these companies. It’s an age of “Big Tech” surveillance, and I want to raise the public’s attention toward this issues and encourage new technologies, legislation and companies dealing with this privacy security issues.

Context:

The first inspiration for my work came from my trip to Andy Warhol Museum, where I saw Ai Weiwei’s wall of photos (Study of Perspective, 1995 to 2003) in which he points his middle fingers toward the famous monuments around the world. Ai Weiwei intended to demonstrate “his personal form of rebellion against any government authority who blatantly or covertly disregard the freedoms of its citizens.” All these photos are juxtaposed closely on one single, and they all have the exactly same composition and the recurring motif of the middle finger. Such design and layout made me feel overpowered by the same message they all try to convey, as if they are screaming how badly they want their voice to be heard and how ubiquitous the issue is. Another inspiration came from the “Big Brother is Watching You” poster for George Orwell’s 1984, as I want to create the effects and impressions of “you are being watched”, so I borrowed the idea of dramatized staring eyes. Besides, as I use screenshots in my work, I think it can be considered as following Marcel Duchamp’s readymades.