SURRENDER YOUR IMAGE (2026 - ongoing )
Artist Statement
Auto-curation of our own images has reached a disgusting high, especially online. We dominate, regulate and curate ourselves all day with our panoptic devices, and we get off on it. But can you get off on the opposite?
Being photographed historically meant losing control. In Susan Sontag's 1977 essay collection On Photography, she describes photographing a person as a kind of violation that turns people into "objects that can be symbolically possessed". Since then, social media has created a scenario where we've become our own objectifiers. As Jia Tolentino explores in her essay "The I in the Internet", the internet has turned the self into a product to be optimised.
I argue that image curation started on the internet for pleasure and has now reached institutional levels of constriction. This goes beyond our owned channels: we hand over our image when we walk down the street, into buildings and parks, usually without noticing, and rarely on our own terms. If you'll surrender your image to the supermarket, why not to ZYX? Could you trust another human with something so intimate?
To structure the trust required for this performance, I'm borrowing the language and process of BDSM because it's a practice that allows bodies to give up control in an agreed-upon way. In a 1982 interview, Michel Foucault describes S&M as a game where everyone knows their roles, the game can be reversed or stopped, and pleasure can come from the back-and-forth of play. This contrasts with institutional power dynamics, which leave little room to move.
My performance is a form of play, and through it, I ask participants to let me confront their impulse to control their image, as well as what an image means in our increasingly surveilled lives.
Upcoming Performances
21st November 2026 @ IN/EX | 100% of artist's proceeds donated to Development Media International DM @INSLASHEX TO RSVP D