Solo show . Galerie A. Gorgi, Sidi Bou Saïd · Maison de Tunisie. Paris. Sémaphore, Neuchâtel
« She didn't know. Until three weeks before the opening. »
Media : Drawing , Artist Book , Video & VR
Themes : Image & Manipulation , Body
In 2014, there were 1.49 billion active Facebook profiles worldwide. 350 million photos were uploaded every day. 4.5 billion Likes were given every day.
Samantha.C was one of them. Her name was chosen at random.
For a year and a half, I accessed a vast amount of information of all kinds: statuses, posts, comments, photographs, tags, GPS information, Likes. I resisted the temptation to send her a friend request. I wanted to work exclusively with her public data — what she had chosen to reveal to others, and what she kept private, beyond my access.
I nevertheless had access to 333 photographs “taken by Samantha.C,” spanning a period of 34 months.
As the months passed, I had the feeling that I knew everything about her, about her life. I knew her hobbies, her closest friends, her family members, her dog’s name, where she worked, when she had started dating her boyfriend, when they broke up, when she stopped smoking…
This observation became an artistic project: more than one hundred graphic works — drawings, collages, paintings, and enhanced photographs — as well as a book somewhere between an exhibition catalogue and a graphic novel.
The book was created in collaboration with graphic designer Moez Akkari, researcher Anne Marie Butler, and artists Aicha Filali and Slimen El Kamel.
I had constructed a subjective visual portrait of a person entirely from her own public data. A new entity — physical, tangible — assembled from information she had herself chosen to share.
Samantha.C was informed three weeks before the opening that her “unhidden” life on Facebook would become the subject of my first solo exhibition.
After fear, doubt, and suspicion, I was able to obtain her permission to have a first Skype conversation with her and record it, with the intention of exhibiting it as a work in its own right.
I showed her what I had made from her data, while we talked about our respective lives. It was a moment outside time and space. An improbable encounter.
On the day of the opening, she was virtually present to greet visitors. We then created a fake Facebook account under the name “Samantha.C,” which we both contributed to and maintained.
In 2018, we met in person for the first time. She had come to see the exhibition in Neuchâtel, where several works from the project were on display.
We had forged an impossible connection — one that could never have existed under ordinary circumstances.
We are still in touch today.
Medium / Date
More than one hundred graphic works; artist’s book, created in collaboration with artists Aicha Filali and Slimen El Kamel, researcher Anne Marie Butler, and graphic designer Moez Akkari; video featuring simultaneous translation (Selima Lejri), filmed and edited by filmmaker Selim Gribaa, produced by Vintage Production.
Galerie A. Gorgi, Sidi Bou Saïd, 2015.
Maison de Tunisie, Paris, France, 2016.
Galerie Sémaphore, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 2017.
→ See also : El Khadhra Projet — Family Album — Les jardins de mon père