With Identity Tags I want to make visible how limited this classifying, identifying, labeling, et cetera is. We seem to believe that we need to put everything in boxes to categorize, like organizing bills in the right folders, and that we help to get a clear picture in doing so. But the picture is incomplete: it has lost its detail and does not show the person as a whole realisticly. Life and human beings are just not that clear and simple like pieces of paper that need to be put in a specific order in a systematic way. We cannot tag, or color code with living beings that are so complex.

In modern times we seem to have become too busy with categorizing. Not only do we test our children with standardized forms in school; we identify psychological problems with standardized scoring tests and categorize them in a classification system without seeing beyond that system and without a more holistic approach. Doctors always want to do standardized blood tests first with every physical problem you have; and when the result is not identifying an abnormality in a category that has fixed limits that apply apparently to everyone; you are considered to be  healthy and labeled as a person who has mental issues instead. Now with the pandemic we have become a test society where you first have to let put cotton up your nose before you are allowed to participate in society. We want to test and identify the sick and the healthy people and separate them. We get color coded as individuals, but also as a group, state or country. 

I used a normal picture of myself and divided that up into squares. Then I looked at which color predominated per square. I identified one color per square and left the other colors that were also present, out. This was the identification and color classification part, where you can see that other important details automatically got lost in the labeling process.

I used 400 squares made out of bio-cotton in my work, because it is the same cotton that is used for swaps to identify viruses like corona, but also to get your DNA for identification of gene defects, if you are the birth father, if you commited a crime, and so on. It gives the impression that it only helps to get a clearer picture of who we are inside and outside. I colored these squares with acrylics in such a way that it matches the colors in the normal picture, but that no square has exactly the same color. Each color is unique on its own, otherwise it can not be a stand alone box. I used plastic to attach the tags, in exactly the same way the textile industry uses this to attach their labels on clothing. This to emphasize that we use labels for humans even though it should only be used for clothes (see the quote above from Martina Navratilova that exactly describes how I feel). I attached the tags on a white cotton sheet to highlight again the fact that we apply clothes labeling on human beings and the material  matches with the cotton of the squares. But also because we are born on a white sheet, and considered to be born tabula rasa (blank slate), but in reality we are already labeled when we are in our mother's womb because of religion, culture etc. Plus we die covered with that same white sheet with all our labels others have put on us still attached. As if the labels have swallowed us to death.

"We were all humans until race disconnected us, religion separated us, politics devided us and wealth classified as" 

- Scarlet Night -

Keywords: Classification, Identification, Categorization, Labeling, Tagging, Determination, Testing, Color-coding, Stereotypes

Dimensions:

212 cm x 215 cm

Technique and used material

Bio-cotton, acrylics, plastic wire, 100% white cotton sheet