Curated by artist Bogomir Doringer in support of Brigitte Felderer from the Applied Arts Academy in Vienna, FACELESS was an exhibition exploring a phenomenon present all around us: the fashion of facelessness that first appeared in the creative arts at the beginning of this century and has remained popular since then. The exhibition reminds us of the impact that media-generated images can have on the creative arts and the ways in which they respond to public images, pop culture, and the mainstream in general. The exhibition shows, the appeal that hiding, veiling, or masking the face exerted on art and fashion after 9/11. The fear of terrorist attacks led to a change in security concepts and the installment of surveillance systems in public spaces – presented to us as if for our own safety. As a result, we feel that our faces are becoming “compressed” and exposed. The only way for us to regain this lost privacy is through subversive media strategies or by reinventing privacy. By wearing a “mask” we form a collective critical body.
In De Markten, FACELESS was presented in a smaller format as a media laboratory open on the invitation of and as part of the 8th Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference. The exhibition successfully merges art and fashion in the context of a subject that is of collective urgency and importance.
Faceless Exhibition – 2015
