Dana Dal Bo
Shan Kelley

For Papier18, dc3 Art Projects is excited to present work by two Montreal-based artists, Dana Dal Bo & Shan Kelley, who were both featured in the recent show Disclosures at dc3 Art Projects, looking at notions of power, agency and control.

In the series In Watching My Reflected Image I Have Begun to Surveil Myself, Dana Dal Bo has sourced vintage negatives through online channels of individuals gazing in mirrors and developed them as one-off silver gelatin prints. The source and subjects of the photographs are unknown, and in developing the images Dal Bo engages with problems of image production, distribution, copyright and consent. Framed with the original negative embedded inside, the responsibility for the life of that image is then passed along to the acquirer of the work.

In her self-less series, Dal Bo scavenges hundreds of nude bathroom selfies from online sources including Twitter, Snapchat and revenge porn sites – images that were shared for personal exhibitionistic intention, pornography produced for profit, and revenge porn circulated against the will of the subject. By obscuring the identity of the individual, and the intention of the exposure, Dal Bo both removes and reinstates control over the images, asking who controls images once online and who has the right to disseminate.

Transcribing text on parchment paper through perforation by hand, Shan Kelley’s Disclosures series chronicles intimate conversations and thoughts. Some of the statements reference a dialogue with past partners, some with random lovers, and others, with the anthropomorphism of his own disease- as a person living with HIV. Here, Kelley harnesses the autonomy of disclosure inverting the power dynamics and acting as a safeguard against the violence and criminalization of being exposed.

Dana Dal Bo is an emerging contemporary Canadian artist whose work explores identity, self-surveillance, voyeurism, exhibitionism and selfie culture. Her work moves in and between photo, video, textiles, performance, and online, and has been shown widely across Canada, USA and Europe. Works from Dal Bo’s self-less series were rece ntly on view in the exhibition Art of the Selfie at Helen Day Art Center in Vermont, alongside Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Marina Abramovic, Suzy Lake, and Hannah Perry.. Dal Bo completed her MFA in Fibres and Material Practices at Concordia University in 2017 and currently lives and works in Montreal, QC, Canada.

Shan Kelley’s practice sits between art and activism, with a fascination for language and the manner in which identity, and body, is deconstructed, created and curated. Since his HIV+ diagnosis in 2009, Kelley has been increasingly inspired to find his voice within the context of disease and adversity, and to push forward using art as action against apathy or surrender. Kelley’s work has been shown across North America, and he has participated in residencies in Mexico and Spain. Kelley currently lives and works in Montreal, QC, Canada.