“There is another world, but it is in this one,” said Surrealist poet Paul Éluard. In this exhibition, artists look to the future, imagining how we move forward from the tumultuous events of the past year. [read more]
Art in the Plague Year is an online exhibition organized by UCR ARTS: California Museum of Photography and curated by Douglas McCulloh, Nikolay Maslov, and Rita Sobreiro Souther. UCR ARTS’s programs are supported by UCR College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, the City of Riverside, Altura Credit Union, and Anheuser-Busch.
All works in this exhibition are reproduced with permission of the artists/copyright holders. Works (images, video, audio or other content) must not be used or reproduced for any purposes other than fair use without prior consent of the artists.
(b. 1988, Los Angeles, CA. Lives and works in Los Angeles)
Sousveillance Selfies
Sousveillance Selfies are self-portraits made by photographing security monitors in stores, on buildings, looking down from above. For artist Sergio Ximenez the true subject is “power dynamics.” When watched, Ximenez watches back. We live in an era of ubiquitous images, a majority of them out of our own control. Surveillance is an authority watching, a threat, an implicit means of control. “Surveillance has an innate power dynamic attached to it by default,” writes the artist. “You are watched by a far-away observer that one cannot directly observe. Sousveillance is a switch in this power dynamic. You become the one with watchful vigilance from underneath.” Ximenez’s Sousveillance Selfies, then, are counter-surveillance—he aims his own camera at monitors showing ‘portraits’ produced by institutional closed-circuit security cameras. The goals are to “take back” power, if only for a moment, to not consent, to take action, and to produce art in the process.
