Exposed to the internet and migrating toward niche online communities, Călinici understands digital identities as a means of protection. Growing up lesbian in Romania, and needing a place dislocated from the IRL, the internet offered a secondary virtual map of the world and its inhabitants. Forging digital profiles allows for constant self-reinvention and awareness of identity as means of defence. The traditional chainmail, now brought into reality by a digital file, then 3D printed, is a product of the performative protection behaviours shaped within constructed identities online.
Can we find a new resolution of armour and protection?
Engaged in critical theory and digital discourse followed by action, one can begin to manifest and forge futures in which techno-feudal surveillance hegemonies can be hijacked.
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Credits: Curator- Julia Geerlings and BEAR Fine Art; Photographer- Django van Ardenne