CODENAME : FLEMING
01.07.21 - 29.08.21
Fleming. It's hard to say what it means.
It could refer to Alexander Fleming, the pioneer of antibiotics. Or Ian Fleming, the author of James Bond. Perhaps this is the point, she says. To hover in the grey zone between public health and espionage.
There are sixteen paintings on the walls. These explore the relationship between cyber weapons, Covid-19 contact-tracing and the death of Jamal Khashoggi. Behind them is a dizzying spectrum of monochrome lines: the white of penicillin through to the black of Bond's tuxedo. All this produces a feeling of totality: an experience I can neither apprehend, nor escape. So we sit on the floor, and she explains.
NSO is a security firm based in Israel. With the spread of Coronavirus, the company began looking for ways to repurpose their cyber weapon technology for the new market of contact-tracing. The result was Fleming: a software built on existing surveillance methods, but redirected towards public health. Originally designed to track terrorists, the same technology has been repackaged to track citizens.
In the fight against Covid, a catalogue of digital and pharmaceutical products have been sold to governments around the world. Among these is Fleming, a product encoded with the logic of the arms industry. This logic is present in the language, which refers to citizens as 'targets'. Fleming’s sister product has successfully tracked, traced and trammelled the opponents of many political regimes: activists, dissidents, human rights defenders and journalists.
Her intention, she tells me, is to think about the relationship between the two.
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INSTALLATION VIEWS
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WORKS
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LIST OF WORKS
The NSO Connection To Jamal Khashoggi
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
WhatsApp spyware attack was attempt to hack human rights data, says lawyer
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
Self Probe Won’t Cut it for Israeli Spyware Company NSO, Says Citizen Lab Researcher
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
Serpentine Galleries Chief Quits, With Harsh Words for Activist Artists
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
Serpentine: Yana Peel resigns over ‘toxic, personal attacks’
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
NSO Group Announces New Human Rights Policy and Governance Framework
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
Facebook Sues Israel’s NSO Group Over Alleged Whatsapp Attack
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
Workers at Israeli surveillance firm NSO sue Facebook for blocking private accounts
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
Israeli court to keep spyware firm information from public
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
We Do Not Target NSO, but Most Evidence Leads to Them, Says Digital Human Rights Researcher
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
Ex-Obama official exits Israeli spyware firm amid press freedom row
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
Israel Spyware Firm NSO Group Maintains Its Products ‘Battle Terrorism’ Alone
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
Israeli Spyware Firm Wants to Track Data to Stop Coronavirus Spreading
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
Israeli Defense Ministry Teaming Up With Spyware Firm NSO to Fight Coronavirus
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
Coronavirus: Israeli spyware firm pitches to be Covid-19 saviour
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
The truth about digital tracking to fight coronavirus
Gouache on paper
100 x 100 cm
PENICILLIN WHITE / TUXEDO BLACK
Gouache wall painting
300 x 8000cm
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Navine G. Khan-Dossos (b. 1982, London) is a visual artist working between London and Athens. Her interests include Orientalism in the digital realm, geometry as information and decoration, image calibration, and Aniconism in contemporary culture.
She has developed a form of geometric abstraction that merges the traditional Aniconism of Islamic art with the algorithmic nature of the interconnected world we live in. This is not the formal abstraction we understand from the western history of art, but something essentially informational, and committed to investigation and communication.
Khan-Dossos has exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. This includes projects with SALT Beyoglu, Istanbul, The Istanbul Design Biennial 2019, The Taipei Biennial 2020, The Van Abbemuseum, the A.M. Qattan Foundation in Ramallah, Leighton House Museum in London, the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Witte de With in Rotterdam and the Delfina Foundation in London.
She is currently part of the Substantial Motion Research Group led by Laura U. Marks.
www.khandossos.com