Dear Guests, Will You Take My Picture?: All Doors Open For Me II

Dear Guest, Will You Take My Picture? is the closing performance in the Dear Guest series, a body of work in which OONA asks the same question from different angles: who owns an image, and what does the body owe the camera that takes it? For this final iteration, staged at the Museum of Moving Image, the question turns adversarial. Working with garment designer Viah Nitro, the performance introduces a dress built to become evidence: a white surface that would carry a visible, physical record of every exchange that took place on it. Throughout the performance, she approached museum guests directly and asked them to photograph her on their own phones. For each picture taken, she inked her thumb in red and pressed the print onto her dress, marking the garment with a record of every exchange. The garment ends the performance covered in red thumbprints, one for every photograph taken. It ends where the series always ends, on the smallest possible unit of ownership: someone’s phone and the museum’s surveillance system.