Curated by: Tanya Gayer
2nd Sat Reception: Saturday, June 8, 2019 - 7:00pm to 10:00pm
I will be presenting my film as part of the opening night reception only on June 8, 2019, 8pm
Exhibition Dates: Jun 5, 2019 to Jun 29, 2019
3rd Thursday Artist Panel Discussion: Thursday, June 20, 2019 - 6:30pm to 8:00pm
Gallery Hours (or by appointment): Wednesday-Saturday, 2-6pm
What is your mother’s maiden name?
Who was your first kiss?
Banks, credit card companies, and social media sites utilize password security questions when users sign up for an account online. If the user forgets their login information in the future, they can retrieve access to their account by answering these security questions correctly. In most cases, the questions ask users to recall specific memories of their life and reinvent them as an extra form of protection. If one cannot remember their password, surely they can be asked to remember their first kiss in order to regain access to their account. But what are the implications of this protocol? What if a user must recall an invasive or predatory experience as their first kiss? The security questions utilized by corporations realize a subtle system that hinges on potentially harmful emotional triggers and notions of inadequacy. Within this system, corporations attempt to standardize beliefs, knowledge, and values that dictate when and where personal history is trusted to formulate identity and security.
My Mother’s Maiden Name analyzes this governance of individual history seen in security questions and implements this question and answer protocol as a precedent to discuss online authorship, culture-construction, and systems of knowledge. The selected artists take a considered approach to the fragility of memory and identity amongst digital data noise to account for information that cannot be quantified through such constructs like security systems.
The artists evaluate elements that are not concrete in text, visible data, or public, and instead entrench themselves in the emotions and values that come with answering a security question or using an Apple-patented gesture, for example. Albeit a coping mechanism or performance to satisfy interfaces with limited language and context, these actions tell important histories and beliefs that go beyond what is typed, selected in a drop down menu, or tracked via wifi. My Mother’s Maiden Name confronts this regulation of bodies to reveal requisite activism, awareness, and dialog to make changes to systems that shape identity and culture in facilities that are otherwise untraceable.
Exhibiting Artists:
Terry Berlier
Michelle Bonilla Garcia
Kira Dominguez-Hultgren
Joty Dhaliwal
Sarah Lee
Kim Miskowicz
Margaret Nobel
Yetunde Olagbaju
Mimi Onuoha
Julien Prévieux
Deborah Stein
tamara suarez porras
Panel Discussion: Thursday, June 20, 6:30 - 8:30pm
Presented in conjunction with My Mother's Maiden Name, Root Division invites you to attend a panel discussion on Thursday, June 20th from 6:30 - 8:30pm with exhibiting artists Kira Dominguez-Hultgren, Joty Dhaliwal, Julien Prévieux and tamara suarez porras and moderated by curator, Tanya Gayer. This discussion will highlight the artist's individual work as well as speak to the range of themes present in the exhibition including how this question and answer protocol as a precedent to discuss online authorship, culture-construction, and systems of knowledge.
My Mother’s Maiden Name is free, open to the public, and includes a Creative Station - all ages art activities hosted in our classroom during the 2nd Saturday opening reception.
