Data (Re)Defined

Passports, contracts, access to space. Power structures dictate how we move, travel and are defined.

A professor recently told me that "art is for the elite. If your work isn't in a gallery, you're just a hobby artist." Quite frankly, this is a bullsh*t.

For my final assignment for his class, I wanted to reject this idea. When so many people don't have access to space and resources because of discrimination and political oppression, can the Metaverse offer a means to create and access space?

As a non-binary South Asian-Latinx artist, there is not one box I fit into. My passport offers an increasing sense of disconnection that I am confronted with when faced with moments the State must perceive me in one way, while I create my own collage of identifiers. In this work, I wanted to create my own version of a passport photo. Unable to sit still, constantly changing. Reclaiming the ways in which patriarchal power structures have defined, or ignored me.

A performative self portrait.