According to the United States Department of Labor, the government collects and holds data about individuals that range from basic information including name, birth date, and home address. With this information, they build their knowledge on family, education, government identification, work, social media, and more. Humans leave trails behind through medical documents, location, fingerprints, facial identification, and DNA from skin, saliva, blood, earwax, and nails. While exploring the human body physically and abstractly, and revealing hidden landscapes microscopically, we discover how the information and trails about ourselves are accumulated over time.
In the abstract pieces, including the square photo-objects, I explore a sense of autonomy when etching away the matte photographs of skin and flesh—concealing hidden meanings behind the drawings and the subject of the microscopic image. Through the digital medium of my work, I explore the technology used to collect this information by the government and medical practitioners. When working with materiality, I selected fabric to represent a bed sheet as it collects the remains from our skin, hair, and saliva before throwing it into the wash; this piece includes the photo-object of the bed sheet as I paired it with the sculpture of skin, a drawing speaking about “what’s left behind,” and the white fabric through its gestural presence.
