The Machine is Working: Yvette James

This exhibition explores the relationship between our bodies and our environments in the information age. With data companies mining our biometric information and storing it in unknown servers around the world, we leave traces of ourselves that extend beyond our immediate spaces. The Machine is Working questions the consequences of this digitization and its impact on our understanding of ourselves.  

Through sculptural constructions of warped body parts cast in aluminium paired with unidentifiable liquids, Yvette James’ artwork is a fleshy representation of biometric data mining. Breaking down digital and physical dichotomies, Yvette expresses immaterial machine processes in alien corporeality. As we hurtle blindly into an increasingly volatile information age, it becomes difficult to grasp the ways in which we are exploited via algorithms and data mining. Yvette’s work reckons with themes of digital translation and fragmented bodies, composing a world behind the opaque screen. 

As technology continues to advance at a rapid rate, our bodies are no longer the most convenient or efficient means of analysis. The intangibility of data systems makes it difficult to comprehend the gravity of our digitisation, and the silent yet horrific ramifications it has upon the human body. By giving these processes physical form, and by harnessing sci-fi horror archetypes of alien landscapes, this exhibition focuses on the realities and consequences of machine learning.