eX de Medici: Technology & surveillance

Mon 28 Aug 2023

eX de Medici has been a strident and consistent critic of humanity’s relentless quest to dominate the natural world, and the technologies that have enabled this behaviour. Her unremitting and ‘forensic’ exploration of the weapon has developed alongside her morbid fascination with the long reach of digital technology.

For instance, her watercolours The Theory of Everything 2005 (illustrated) and Live the (Big Black) Dream 2006 (illustrated) include a satellite and a CCTV camera, respectively, hidden among other human-generated detritus, in reference to government- and corporate-sponsored surveillance and control.

‘The theory of everything’ 2005

‘Live the (Big Black) Dream’ 2006

With the rise of the internet and social media, de Medici has become increasingly alarmed at the prevalence and sophistication of the telecommunication systems that have infiltrated our lives, leading her to conclude that:

We live in an era of . . . the masked terrorist and tactical police alike, of confessional, anonymous Facebook life . . . I’ve collected these images [of barbarism] since the global news broadcast of a phone video showing the [2006] lynching of Saddam Hussein by an hysterical, screaming, and chaotic gang of hooded men . . . I knew instantly from that moment, everything had changed about how the screen, instead of entertaining us, was shaping a new code of values . . . The new screen life hunts everything down . . . Technology is terraforming the global landscape, a vast and exponential Earth-shaping web of insider-trading, corruption, and distractions. Technology is terraforming the hive mind.

De Medici has persistently voiced these concerns in artworks such as the panoramic Spies Like Us 2016 (illustrated) and other watercolours from the exhibition of that name, including Asleep While Awake 2016–17 (illustrated) and The Great Acceleration 2017 (illustrated), employing the analogue language of pigment on paper, rather than the machinery she critiques.

‘Spies Like Us’ 2016

‘Asleep While Awake’ 2016–17

‘The Great Acceleration’ 2017

‘The Law (Ops)’ 2013–14

‘Protecting Your Insecurity’ 2018

‘Big Spies’ 2014–15

‘eX de Medici: Beautiful Wickedness’ in 1.2 and 1.3 (Eric and Marion Taylor Gallery) was at GOMA from 24 June until 2 October 2023. ‘Beautiful Wickedness’ offered opportunities for dialogue with ‘Michael Zavros: The Favourite‘ presented in the adjacent gallery 1.1 (The Fairfax Gallery) and 1.2.