ID

“ID” condenses the reflections of the series “John Doe, an abstract identity”, rethinking what is it that constructs us as beings, that ensures our uniqueness in the midst of a plurality of existences. Establishing bonds between the real world, both physical and psychic, and the virtual world, “ID” is constituted as a questioning of the self, making comments on genetics, technology, media and society.

 

In human beings, each cell normally contains twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, resulting in a total of forty-six. Each chromosome is the part of the cell that contains genetic information, that is, it is the sector that stores all the data that dictates our body and psyche. What will my eye colour be like? Will I be more prone to contracting skin cancer? Blurring the boundary between art and biology, I investigate how the sequencing of chemical elements such as adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine are the key to the development of my whole being. 

 

Working with a saliva sample, I obtained information about the nucleotide bases that make up each of my genes. Through the tokenization of twenty-three NFTs, each containing the genetic information of every one of my twenty-three chromosomes, I explore the self-portrait in its most intimate dimension. In this way, I reflect on how a simple set of letters can condense all the information necessary to construct my identity, conceiving the self as pure information, which can therefore be constructed and modified with simple variations of data. 

 

By making public the very intimate information that constructs my being, I explore the exhibitionist dimension of the present day, which allows us to expose ourselves to the flood of users without regime or control. Identity is commodified, assigned a commercial value, becoming the property of others. No one can purchase more than one NFT from this series, which results in a fragmentation of my identity, a groping that falls into the hands of strangers, with complete loss of control.

 

I construct an analogy with the virtual dimension of the self-construction of identity, paralleling the completely unique and personal genetic identity with blockchain technology, which guarantees uniqueness by sealing each unit with a specific and singular ID. A symbiosis is generated between the information that composes me as a being, both physically and virtually, completely crossed by technology, giving value to that which codifies me as a unique being, which legitimizes my identity.