We live here with you II

We live here with you is a collection of self-portraits of the members of the Kamera Skura collective presented in the convention of social advertising. Both works serve as a reference to marketing campaigns of the Italian clothes brand United Colors of Benetton, which used the very expressive, if not at times shocking, photographs of the Italian photographer Olivier Toscani. Taboo-breaking scenes, drastic motifs of suffering, and, especially, the fact that they are incorporated in an advertising campaign, have frequently been the cause of much controversy around the globe.

The photographs by Kamera Skura are an ironic but brave reaction to Benetton’s campaigns. The first version of the work We live here with you is a reference to posters which touched on the problem of racism. In response to the photographs, which presented models of different races and the company’s logo, the artists showed their grotesque self-portraits made up to look like an Indian, a black person, and an Asian. The effect was created with the use of, respectively: smeared ketchup, chocolate, and curry paste. In the second photograph from the series, the artists were shown as persons with disabilities, without both arms. What seems genuine at first glance soon turns out to be a hoax – the hands are made to look like stumps by hiding the arms, bent at the elbows, in shirt sleeves.

Though Kamera Skura applies mimicry and masquerade, the artists do not intend to build a perfect illusion. On the contrary, their visual trickery is pretty obvious. While Benetton’s campaigns have the power of engaging the viewer, the works by Kamera Skura create a distance, which is one of the biggest enemies of engaged actions. We live here with you is intended to attack not so much the idea which the actions of Benetton invoke, but their rhetoric. The artists show it in a caricature-like fashion: in place of shocking photographs, we see a prank played on the viewer – seriousness is replaced by the absurd, and the context of an expensive advertisement is replaced by that of niche art. Kamera Skura goes for irony and humour, questioning, however, not the significance of social problems but the manner in which they are discussed.

Izabela Kopania