Digital image. Based on: Man Ray, Masque Kiki, 1962

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In Kiki Freelancers Worldwide, Eva and Franco Mattes hired a freelance worker through an online marketplace to paint her face like Man Ray’s Masque Kiki. The Mattes, who have been exploring online economies and outsourced means of production in recent works such as BEFNOED (2013-), Image Search Result (2014-) and Dark Content (2015), here play on the sharp contrast between Kiki de Montparnasse, an icon of female independence and intellectual freedom, and the anonymous online worker. Or, is participation in online cultures that is becoming uncannily similar to a form of exploitation?
Eva and Franco Mattes are an artist duo based in New York. Since the second half of the 1990s, they have explored the impact of technology and the web on society almost nonstop, exploiting the potential of narrative construction, identity theft, simulation and real-world intervention introduced by digital media.