Unface
Ones to Watch
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Ones to Watch 👀👀
This project was born from a fascination with faces. Unface examines the function of our faces as social tools in present day in relation to technology and explores the make-up of self-identity in the digital age.
The face seems destined for the sculpture, for the image of its commemoration; it is the most essential, mysterious, and esoteric element of the human being. Its appearance is the quiet precedent to all humanities achievements as social creature – the ‘roadway between men’ says Kōbō Abe.
Today this roadway though has become an extensive network of superhighways: our faces curated, formulated, and rendered at once through a hyper-image flow. Unface questions the implications of such a network.
Should we return to the old roadway? In the information age, perhaps it is privacy, and the right to be unseen, that’s more essential to sustaining intimacy and connection.
What would we make of a world in which humankind are absolutely free from the possibility of being seen?
And do we have the capacity to make anything of it if we can’t see it?
I’m a 22-year-old photo-based artist and writer. I’m interested in contemporary visual culture’s implications on the way we communicate, and in the implications of photography as a social tool in the present day. My projects constantly return to the question - is imagery today, aiding or hindering our ability to remain truly intimate and connected?
Inspired by the writings of Kōbō Abe, Guy Debord and Roland Barthes among others, through my work I hope to understand how we can become more intimate, expressive and authentic in a digital society characterised by illusionment and incomprehension.
I believe it is our job as visual communicators to spread awareness and educate others about the workings and personal implications for people of a social landscape mediated by images, and how the changing ways in which we communicate will demand a change within ourselves if we are to keep up and remain truly connected.