Mimi Ọnụọha – privacy and data

Mimi Ọnụọha is a visual artist whose work critiques how tech companies’ unprecedented access to data has shaped the information we often blindly accept as complete and holistic. In Us, Aggregated, Ọnụọha takes her own family photos and reverse image-searches them, then compiles the resulting photos into a gallery. While we see image searches so commonly when even just looking through similar google images, Ọnụọha brings attention to the differences between the images and the diversity of people lumped together by an AI algorithm. She explores the power imbalances perpetuated by technology and seeks to de-normalize the “projected realities” we have been conditioned to perceive as natural. 

The Library of Missing Datasets is a physical repository (both in a file cabinet and on GitHub) that calls attention to the things we do not have quantified, but perhaps should in a world where so much is collected. Ọnụọha calls our attention to issues of the privacy of our information as well as the privacy of data that has either been not collected or intentionally hidden from the public.