As data collection technologies evolve – from overt public surveillance to the invisible digital tracking embedded in our daily lives – our personal spaces and identities are quietly infiltrated, commodified, and erased. This square floor sculpture combines a striking neon light, wires, and LED name tags within a sleek acrylic box, creating a layered commentary on data surveillance’s impact on autonomy and identity in the digital age.
The neon light, placed subtly at the side of the box, emits the phrase NOTHING TO HIDE – a statement that is both a challenge and a concession. Its placement ensures the light does not overwhelm but instead serves as an ambient reminder of the paradox we live in: a world that demands transparency while perpetually eroding our privacy. The wires within the box wind chaotically, symbolizing the invisible but tangled systems of surveillance that connect and exploit us.
At the heart of the sculpture, the LED name tags flicker with fragments of identity – names, searches, social media activity, and more – representing the 8 major streams of data that shape how we are tracked and commodified. These tags, designed to display individuality, instead highlight its erasure, revealing how even our most personal markers are stripped of meaning and transformed into data points within a larger machine.Encased in transparent acrylic, the work invites viewers to peer inside, confronting the unsettling reality of how seamless personal data is captured, stored, and repurposed. The box becomes both a container and a metaphor for the surveillance systems that enclose us, visible yet intangible, omnipresent yet impossible to full grasp.
The work challenges viewers to reflect on their complicity within this system. It asks: What does it mean to live under constant observation? How do we reclaim autonomy when even our names are no longer our own? Through its layered elements, the sculpture underscores the unpaid labour of protecting privacy and the commodification of identity.

Joanne Lim CV