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Fia Backström

Socially Organized Appearance

Maker

Fia Backström (Swedish, b. 1970)

Title

Socially Organized Appearance

Year

2009

Medium

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

Dimensions

61 x 76.2 cm (24 x 30 inches)

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Gift of Avo Samuelian and Hector Manuel Gonzalez

Object Number

2017.19.5

Type

Exhibition History

The Phantom of Liberty
Contemporary Works in the RISD Museum Collection
May 04, 2018 – Dec 30, 2018

Label copy

This work includes a stock image of these incredibly white people, in skin tone, clothes, and setting. The title is from Guy Debord’s 1967 book The Society of the Spectacle. Michael Taussig’s What Color is the Sacred? (2009) is also related, how everything colorful has been deemed exotic and “other.”

This work considers the difference between the U.S. [the United States] and “US,” whether as US the consumers or U.S. the nation. With this current regime, we are back to an understanding that seems to eerily correlate to this image in its total fetishism of the exclusivity of whiteness. The stickers attach to the wall so that the piece has no autonomy, but the whiteness of the wall and the people is bound to a larger structure.

-Fia Backström

Image use

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In copyright This object is in copyright

Tombstone

Fia Backström (Swedish, b. 1970)
Socially Organized Appearance, 2009
Photograph mounted to aluminum, 30 adhesive decals
61 x 76.2 cm (24 x 30 inches)
Gift of Avo Samuelian and Hector Manuel Gonzalez 2017.19.5

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