(2010) Dimensions variable. Oil painting on stretched canvas, surveillance camera, B&W security monitor, fur hat.
After discovering a small engraving of Ben Franklin wearing an unusual fur hat in 2007, I learned that he was depicted this way to connect him to the French philosopher Rousseau as a fellow enlightened thinker. If being enlightened required as little as a fur hat, I thought that I should be portrayed in the same way.
I produced a digital image of myself in a fur hat, which I then had made into an oil painting by a factory in China. I put a tiny surveillance camera behind a hole in one of the eyes. When installed, as viewers approached the painting, their faces were captured on a small surveillance monitor elsewhere in the space. On top of the monitor was a fur hat similar to the one worn by Ben Franklin, Rousseau, and myself.
