Who Gets to Look, Who Gets to Hide

We are constantly being recorded and monitored, which is undeniably useful in some situations, but at what price?

In this work, the aim is to reverse the roles and the control by confronting a device that continuously extracts data from our everyday lives : surveillance cameras. After accessing surveillance cameras and webcams in Miami, I used a mirror to catch and reflect the sun directly into the surveillance camera’s lens, creating a stain on the live footage; a big halo of light meant to obstruct the vision, the analysis, and the surveillance.

In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault presents the panopticon as a metaphor for modern disciplinary societies. Today almost all forms of surveillance technologies are one-sided. With this intervention, I invert the roles, the light hits the cameras to indicate to the watchers that they are also being watched.

Installation view, Chelsea New York City, 2025

The images blurs as the viewer gets close to the frames.
A sensor detects the presence of a person in front of the frame, sends an electrical current to the film placed over the images, and causes them to blur.

24” x 16” inches

Who gets to look, who gets to hide - The Book, 2025, Elisabed Dushuashvili & Olympe Gautier.