Lina A: R.A.M. Random Access Memory

About

Join us for Lina A’s first UK-based solo exhibition with new photographic works sourced from forgotten SD cards – building upon a fascinating history of conceptual photography using found images.

The artist brings the critical conversation surrounding photographic authorship and data ownership into the new millennium, when she was born – only to warn us of the latest dangers in 2020s, courtesy of the boom of AI and its potential to shape and prune our fallible memories.

Lina memorialises analogue photographs. The ‘forgotten data’ that she has sourced second-hand from discarded SD cards and projector slides become her art objects. Like a home-decor anthropologist, she mounts photos in acrylic, on wood or in rotating digital frames. Here, she mimics the popular and sometimes kitsch gifts of the 2000s and 2010s for memory preservation.

Through this process of restoring what’s been previously lost, forgotten and decontextualised, Lina re-values this digital and analogue waste with new intent. She indicates how anonymous photographers and ordinary subjects alike can be filled with vibrancy and agency, through the many-layered emotional narratives they manifest in their reception with us, the viewers.