slide projection of 33 frames / series of 33 c-prints, 20x30 cm each, marker 2015 Under
Suspicion presents
a series of photographic slides of everyday public scenes. Manually
rendered pen markings highlight potentially suspicious objects or
behaviours. The work manifests the impact of government initiatives
instructing citizens on how to recognize suspicious targets, whilst
simultaneously drawing attention to the resulting shift in the optics
of public perception of reality. Previously non-descript articles
become signifiers, as the intangible presence of the invisible enemy
is imported into peaceful life. Although indicative of the current
climate, the project was initiated in 2011 to articulate the
paranoiac state response to the series of social protests in Ukraine.
State surveillance and control mechanisms heightened in a bid to
amass a vast archive, capable of being used for prosecution of those
individuals implicated. Ridnyi interprets this hidden police archive
as the quintessence of paranoid state control; its secrecy provoked
the creation of his fictitious archive, where almost any individual
documented in certain circumstances becomes the subject of suspicion,
and patterns are defined where they previously did not exist.         |