Data Anthropologies:
Natasha Caruana Love is an Act

17 July – 16 December 2015

Exhibition at the Open Data Institute, London
Curated by Hannah Redler-Hawes

Data as Culture 3: Data Anthropologies places people at the centre of emerging data landscapes. The Open Data Institute offers itself as the focal point of this exploration by hosting a series of Artists in Residence. During her time in residence at the ODI – from July to December, 2015 – photographic artist Natasha Caruana will exhibit recent works and develop a concept for a new piece, responding to or working with open data.

Natasha Caruana uses her own experience to explore the universal themes of love, fantasy and betrayal. While her primary medium is photography, she also employs performance, texts,
sound, drawings, online materials, objects and film in her work. She also draws on data from diverse disciplines including science, psychology and anthropology.

Taking an ethnographic approach – the systematic study of people and cultures – Natasha gathers data from her subjects by placing herself into their circumstances and building direct
relationships with them. In Fairytale for Sale she poses as a bride to be, for Married Man she creates a persona of a woman seeking an affair. Love Bomb explores love and self-destruction in a culture driven to achieve perfect romantic love. In At First Sight Natasha includes herself and her new husband amongst a study group of people who have fallen in love at first sight.

Natasha does not judge her subjects and her works equally invite us, their viewers, to suspend our own moralising in encountering them. Her unusual methods have attracted praise
for being at the forefront of a new wave of documentary photographers, and have raised eyebrows given the fine ethical line she sometimes treads.

Data as Culture 3: Data Anthropologies is curated by Hannah Redler-Hawes, ODI Associate Curator in Residence, with Julie Freeman, ODI Art Associate and Gavin Starks, ODI CEO. It includes artists’ residencies, new commissions, events and partnerships. Artists Thomson & Craighead were ODI Artists in Residence from February – June, 2015.

View the artworks
About Natasha Caruana
Download the exhibition catalogue PDF