Flax Studio Invites San Antonians to Dress As Their Reductive Facebook Category for Upcoming Exhibition

Thanks to the extra scrutiny (read: people actually starting to pay attention) that Facebook’s inner-workings received as a part of the whole Cambridge Analytica debacle earlier this year, folks are now hip to the meticulous sorting and identifying information that the social-media giant gathers on its users. This information results in users being identified by a set of Facebook categories — things like “U.S. Politics (Very Liberal),” “Engaged Shopper,” and “Multicultural Affinity,” among many others.

Intrigued and unsettled by this, artist Emily Royall and Flax Studio have come up with a unique way of interacting with and critically examining the relationship between honest-to-god human people and their reductive Facebook categories. The public is invited to “come dressed as your Facebook categories to be part of a photo series documenting the border between our physical and online personas.” The results of the “Data Fictions” photo sessions will become an exhibition to be unveiled at Flax on October 5.

$5 suggested donation, Fri Aug 31, 8-11pm, Flax Studio, 1420 S. Alamo St., (909) 518-2245, flaxstudiosa.com.

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