For my graduate degree at Georgetown University, I took a class on curating contemporary art. For the final project, we were asked to create an exhibition proposal with one restriction of our choice rather we were a curator at SAAM and had to restrict ourselves to American Artists or a curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, where we could only select womxn artists. I chose the latter.

Curatorial Statement

“Smile! You’re on camera: The Women of Surveillance Art” focuses on women surveillance artists’ response and understanding of the visual methods of surveillance in regards to voyeuristic photography. This exhibit title originates from the phrase that we see printed on plaques in a variety of places that deal with the general public. The phrase references the command photographers give moments before taking a photo of their subject. Moreover, the command to smile reminds the visitor to act on their best behavior for the security cameras as their behavior is being watched. While the phrase is too sycophantic for most art museums, the concept of being aware that you are on camera takes a different form in phrases like “Caution: Security Cameras in Use” or “Area Under Surveillance” that make visitors hyper-aware of the surveillance environment. The title’s emphasis on smile refers to the sexual harassment command often given by male cat-callers to women they see. Smile underscores the relationship of surveillance to male assertion over women’s bodies in the public and private sphere.

This exhibition fits well with the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ goal of seeking to inspire dynamic exchanges about art and ideas and addressing gender imbalance. Not only does this exhibition engage with a contemporary political topic, but it also engages with addressing voyeurism by male artists in the art historical canon. This is the first exhibition to address the gendered nature of surveillance and the intersection of women of color and surveillance. The target audience of this exhibition are women of all ages in order to bring attention to issues of surveillance that they must have considered before. The concepts discussed by the artists are relevant for teenage girls who are the largest social users of the internet and should be aware of the way their online presence affects the surveillance of their bodies. Moreover, this exhibition could be helpful for older women who are not as computer literate and need to be more aware of their actions online that could reveal personal information about themselves and their families. Moreover, it could teach male visitors about the experiences of being a woman online and in the physical world while also teaching them valuable lessons on surveillance. The National Museum of Women in the Arts is a fitting institution to house the first exhibition focusing on the women of surveillance art.

This show is very different than other surveillance art exhibitions, which often are predominantly male-focused. Moreover, many of the large name surveillance art shows in the D.C. area are retrospectives of male artists such as Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen at the Smithsonian American Art Museum or Ai Weiwei: Trace at Hirshhorn. By nature of showing only women, this exhibition distinguishes itself from other surveillance shows. Moreover, this exhibition seeks to address some of the misogynistic attitudes of male surveillance artists. For example, Txema Salvans in his The Waiting Game and Mishka Henner’s project No Man’s Land uses surveillance tools such as a long-range camera and Google Maps to follow sex workers. Despite the fact that Google Maps partnered with National Network to End Domestic Violence when they launched “Street View” to ensure that undisclosed shelters would not appear in Google Maps or Street View. This exhibition sets itself apart by acknowledging the way that these artists engage with surveillance is more invasive to women’s bodies than data mining and is part of a historical practice of violence against women.

Beyond cat-calling and other forms of voyeurism, government organizations historically have watched women. For example, British suffragettes who fought in the early twentieth century for women’s right to vote were considered to be subversive revolutionaries and were placed under surveillance and forcibly photographed by the police upon arrest. This issue is incredibly relevant for today’s politics. The damage done by the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King and the Black Panthers during the Civil Rights movement is still felt in the black community and set precedence to surveillance of members of the Black Lives Matter Movement. Sadie Barnette’s work Observation(2017) seeks to challenge the viewer to view the FBI dossier on her father, a member of the Black Panther Party, through the eyes of a young girl. Moreover, surveillance is a bipartisan issue, as people critiqued both President George W. Bush for the USA PATRIOT Act and President Barack Obama for the NSA’s surveillance program on citizens. The Pew Research Center determined that 91% of adults in their survey on “Public Perceptions of Privacy and Security in the Post-Snowden Era” said they “agree” or “strongly agree” that consumers have lost control over how personal information is collected and used by companies. 88% of adults “agree” or “strongly agree” that it would be very difficult to remove inaccurate information about them online. Lastly, 80% of those who use social networking sites say they are concerned about third parties like advertisers or businesses accessing the data they share on these sites.6 These insecurities around controlling data have only increased with Mark Zuckerberg’s hearing in front of Congress in regards to Facebook’s relationship with Cambridge Analytica. 

This exhibition focuses on post-millennial art to concentrate on surveillance concerns after 9/11. While there are numerous women who have engaged with surveillance art, such as Martha Roser, Sophie Calle, and Julia Scher, their engagement with surveillance has less emphasis on the internet’s effect on the surveillance of women. These women are stemming from counterculture’s embrace of George Orwell’s dystopian surveillance novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). Suzanne Treister’s work Post-Surveillance Art Poster / NSA Sex Bomb (2014) pays homage to 1960s counterculture by creating a sex-themed psychedelic poster that references both the NSA and the Information Awareness Office. The choice of post-millennial art is in order to concentrate on how visual surveillance is now available to the masses through the internet. Moreover, while the photographic medium is at the core of the exhibition, with the works of Jill Magid, Elizabeth Travelslight, and Sanaz Mazinani, the artists also respond to surveillance technologies of today such as the biometrics of Heather Dewey-Hagborg Ph.D and Michal Rovner.

The interdisciplinary focus of these works opens up a variety of partnerships outside of the museum. The most obvious partnership is with legal organizations that protect the privacy of the general public and the whistleblowers that draw attention to these violates and organizations like the ACLU that protect people of color from racist surveillance. Within that realm, political activists from the Black Lives Matter movement (the three founders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi are all women) and the Women’s March are also possible partners for discussing the surveillance of women political activists. Another more corporate sponsorship could be cybersecurity companies that focus on protecting the private data of citizens and companies. Lastly, medical organizations could be another sponsor, as this exhibition focuses on DNA phenotyping.

The most controversial aspect of this work is perhaps the most critical piece in the exhibition, Dr. Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s Radical Love: Chelsea Manning (2015). While Chelsea Manning was pardoned by President Obama in 2018 during his last month in office, her likeness in the exhibition could result in outrage. While no major incidents occurred when the works were on view in New York City, the presence of the work in the capital, however, could be more controversial. Thus, the work may need to be protected by Plexiglass. Moreover, the museum would need to thoroughly research whether or not it would be worth having Chelsea Manning attend Dr. Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s artist lecture. It is a critical loan because it pairs well with NMWA’s Michal Rovner Data Zone, Cultures Table #3 (2003). This work looks like two Petri dishes filled with cultures of DNA or bacteria, but upon closer inspection are silhouettes of people from a bird’s eye view. Both of these works speak to the increasing biological aspect of surveillance. This new form of surveillance also speaks to the history of eugenics in which Sir Francis Galton believed that fingerprinting could demonstrate white racial supremacy. Thus, while Radical Love: Chelsea Manning is a controversial work, it is also elemental to discussing issues of surveillance and body autonomy.

Another critical loan is that of Jill Magid’s Evidence Locker. Control room. (2004) a two-panel digital video. Magid, as part of a thirty-one-day performance in Liverpool, asked the company in charge of Liverpool’s surveillance, Citywatch, to film her. She dressed in a red trench coat and posed in some locations and in others had Citywatch guide her while she closed her eyes. To receive the footage, she had to submit request forms, which she wrote in the form of love letters, thus turning surveillance into a two-way dialogue.9 Another critical loan is that of Sanaz Mazinani Together We Are (2011). Surveillance of Muslim Americans and citizens living in the Middle East is an incredibly political topic. The surveillance of these communities is often justified through mass media attention to issues such as polygamy, child marriages, and honor killings. However, surveillance of these communities rarely aids women who are victims of violence at the hands of law enforcement. While Kate McQuillen as a white woman cannot speak to TSA's invasion of privacy on women of color, Boxcutter III from The X-rays Series (2013) illustrates the desire of surveillance groups to look underneath women’s clothing. She took personal items of clothing with cutout paper weapons concealed within the folds were placed through a printing press and creates a resemblance to an x-ray scan. The prints show the duplicitous nature of harmless objects and show the voyeuristic aspects of security procedures on women’s bodies.11 These works are critical to understanding the gendered aspect of surveillance.

“Smile! You’re on camera”: The Women of Surveillance Art speaks to the multi-dimensional ways in which visual and biological surveillance has impacted women. Through the post-millennial lens of big data, these artworks challenge the authoritative nature of surveillance on women’s bodies. The methods that Apple uses to track their consumers are identical technological strategies that abusers use to stalk their intimate partners, yet this relationship has never been explored through male-dominated surveillance art exhibitions.12 By bringing these artists together for the first time, a dialogue can be created on the ways that surveillance affects women of all races no matter trans or cis-gender.

Introductory Wall Text

“Smile! You’re on camera.” From bodegas to fine art museums, we are used to the idea that we are on camera. With the rapid rise of digital photography, we have collectively accepted being seen and watched as a normal experience. 

However, the fight against surveillance has not gone quietly in the night. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed lawsuits against the USA PATRIOT Act that allows law enforcement to search telephone and email records without a court order, violating the Fourth Amendment. In 2013, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden released classified documents proving the United States was mining the data of their citizens. Five years since Snowden’s release of documents, we still have problems around surveillance, most recently of social media sites selling our information to companies like Cambridge Analytica. 

However, the discussion on the effect of surveillance on women is often absent from the conversation. As frequent subjects of voyeurism, women’s privacy has historically been under attack. United States government surveillance practices are intimately connected to stalking, a behavior that disproportionately targets women. Technology has allowed cyber-peeping toms to specifically target women’s cloud storage and release their private photos but also marks women of different races for the suspicion of being anti-American. This exhibition focuses on women’s artistic responses to law enforcement watching private civilians as less of a dystopian future but of an unfortunate reality and the extension of the male-government gaze.  ​​​​ 

Extended Labels

List of Public Program Ideas

FRESH TALK Lectures

NMWA’s public program initiative entitled “Women, Arts, and Social Change” has a series of lectures launched in 2015 called “FRESH TALK”. These lectures mean to expand the dialogue on what it means to be a champion for women. The purpose of these talks are not to discuss NMWA’s collection of objects but instead to give women a platform to talk about ideas from a range of disciplines in order to engage diverse audiences, not just regular art museum visitors.

Academic

A lecture focused around the book “Feminist Surveillance Studies”. We would invite the two authors Rachel E. Dubrofsky and Shoshana Amielle Magnet. Dubrofsky is an associate Professor of Communication at the University of South Florida. Beyond this book she wrote The Surveillance of Women on Reality Television: Watching The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. That specific topic would be of interest as it is a popular show to which the audience can relate. Magnet is an associate Professor at the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her other book is entitled When Biometrics Fail: Gender, Race, and the Technology of Identity. ​​ 

Political

Invite the Women’s March leaders Bob Bland, Carmen Perez, and Linda Sarsour, and Tamika Mallory and the Black Lives Matter founders, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, to talk about the surveillance that they are under, particularly around planning marches and their use of encrypted apps. This talk could be moderated by a lawyer who focuses on criminal justice. A point of concern for this public programming is the accusation of anti-Semitism by specific members of the Black Lives Matter founders and the Women’s March leaders.

Artist Visit

Dr. Heather Dewey-Hagborg is the closest artist living to D.C. as she works out of New York as an AI Fellow at NYU. Her work is the most non-traditional artistic method and a lecture on how she creates her models would be greatly educational. The scientific process of her work would also appeal to people who are not as interested in art. The museum could advertise this lecture to biology programs and Med Schools in the DC area. This would entice people to visit NMWA who may feel that art is outside their range.

Lecture-based workshops

 Lawyers (one of the following)

• Yolanda Rondon is a Staff Attorney for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). At the ADC she works on legal cases and policy issues related to surveillance, racial and religious profiling, hate crimes, employment discrimination and immigration.

• Cindy Cohn is an American civil liberties attorney specializing in Internet law. She represented Daniel J. Bernstein and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in Bernstein v. the United States. She also has filed lawsuits against AT&T for working with the NSA.

• Hina Shamsi is the director of the ACLU National Security Project. The National Security Project focuses on ensuring that United States security practices and policies are consistent with the Constitution and human rights. Some of the cases she has litigated are focused on upholding freedom of speech and she always has worked on post-9/11 discrimination.

• Faiza Patel is the Co-Director of, Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law. Before Congress, she testified opposing dragnet surveillance of Muslims.

Cyber-Security Experts (Panel moderated by a privacy lawyer)

Sharon L. Cardash is the Associate Director, Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University. Previously, she served as the policy advisor to Canada’s Minister of Foreign aids and the Center for Strategic and International Studies focuses on cybersecurity and counterterrorism.

Georgia Weidman is a security expert and author of Penetration Testing: a Hands-On Introduction to Hacking. She was awarded a DARPA Cyber Fast Track grant to help support education on cybersecurity.

Kim Zetter is the author of Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon which covers the story of the virus that disrupted Iran’s nuclear plan. She is interested in cyber-crime and privacy.

Book Club

 For Adults

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. The idea of surveillance of women is engrained in the book. The “Eyes” are main actor in the book. They are secret police who keep watch to crush dissent. The symbol of the eye recurs throughout the book. It is also tattooed on the handmaid’s’ ankles as a reminder that they are under constant surveillance. With the Hulu series adapting the book into a television show, it is a popular choice that will entice visitors.

 For Teens

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. The book has many references to surveillance, such as the “jabberjay” birds who report back to the capital what people are saying in the districts. The book also relates to Foucault’s theories on how surveillance acts as social control over people’s actions. The reference to Foucault would be appealing to high schools as a learning visit to NMWA.

Financial and Project Management Statement

In regards to the artworks in the exhibition, there are three works that will be expensive to deliver to NMWA. Those works are Addie Wagenknecht’s Asymmetric Love (2013), Dr. Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s Radical Love: Chelsea Manning (2015), and Sanaz Mazinani Together We Are (2011). Wagenknecht’s Asymmetric Love coming from Museumsquartier Vienna in Austria is a potential problem. However, Wagenknecht has done several iterations of this work and their locations are not available online. After making contact with the artist, we could discover that there is a version in the United States that would not require overseas travel. Dr. Dewey-Hagborg’s work may require additional security as the subject of Chelsea Manning could incite protests at the museum. Additional funds would need to be set aside for the possibly increased need for security at the museum and when the artwork is in transit.

The most expensive public program idea would be the lawyer-based workshops. While ideally, this project would be part of a series of workshops, realistically we could only sponsor one or two in the same event. For a big-name lawyer such as Cindy Cohn, funds would need to be set aside from the FRESH TALK lecture programming. These events could also follow the format of event sponsors that NMWA has used in the past to make events and exhibitions more affordable. Some D.C.-based sponsors could be cybersecurity companies such as NordVPN, Symantec, BitDefender, McAfee, and Malwarebytes.