Foreign Affairs is an ongoing photographic project of embassy backdoors photographed by the artist whilst traveling in cities around the world. In its capture of this other and alternative facade of diplomatic architecture, it reveals as much the overlooked as it does the surprising, with some backdoors appearing simple and lacking in the ostentation or display generally expected of an embassy’s frontage. In concept, the artwork also alludes to secrets and intrigue, even as such confidentiality is necessary for purposes of security. As embassy addresses are generally of their front entrances, the capture of these backdoors is itself an investigative act, wherein the artist, by walking around the location of the embassy, serendipitously, stumbles upon its backdoor – a discovery that is also in plain sight. With each backdoor image repeated across the canvas, the artwork also speaks to the subject of surveillance – of the propagation and ubiquity of closed-circuit cameras and the act of monitoring them, within which the artist’s clandestine capture becomes complicit. Simultaneously, the repetition creates a visual texture and pattern that may be read in relation to the artist’s graphic and formal aesthetic.
