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Art

Evidentiary Realism

Like the offspring of Edward Snowden and Banksy, Italian artist Paolo Cirio’s own “performative hacks” mine internet data to create critical works at the intersection of privacy, copyright, democracy and finance. This hack is on through Feb 17.

Image for Evidentiary Realism

Courtesy of the artist, Charlie James Gallery

Like the offspring of Edward Snowden and Banksy, Italian artist Paolo Cirio’s own “performative hacks” mine internet data to create critical works at the intersection of privacy, copyright, democracy and finance. In 2016, for example, he blurred the mugshots of over 15 million people arrested in the US and reshuffled their data on cloned websites while drafting the internet privacy policy “Right to Remove”. Now, Cirio has curated a group exhibition featuring an incredible array of artists (from Hans Haacke to Jenny Holzer) who engage complex social systems through data-driven evidence. Here, veteran artists such as Mark Lombardi – represented by a signature flowchart mapping the financial transactions and political connections between former US President Bush, Osama Bin Laden and global banks – are in frank discussion with younger artists, such as Ingrid Burrington (whose large-scale lenticular print combines two satellite photos of Google’s data centre in South Carolina), for a conversation that does not end with net neutrality. See it for yourself, while you still can.

Through Feb 17