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for Reform
Reform
Artist
Hasan Elahi
(American, born 1972)
Date2025
MediumPigment print
DimensionsFrame Size: 20 1/4 × 20 1/4 in. (51.4 × 51.4 cm)
(50 individually framed prints, installation dimensions variable)
ClassificationsPrint
Credit LineGift of the artist, 2025
Object numberUAC7847
DescriptionIn 2002, Hasan Elahi was wrongly identified as a potential terrorist, leading to a six-month investigation by the FBI. In response, he began a long-term project called Tracking Transience, 2002–present, in which he publicly posts documentation of his daily activities so that the FBI can monitor him more easily. By transforming the normally secret and coercive act of surveillance into a public and voluntary one, the project satirically embraces the erosion of civil rights in America, especially the increased surveillance of immigrants, people of color, and Muslims in the wake of 9/11.Reform is comprised of 50 photographs from Tracking Transience taken across the United States. The photographs are overlaid with the pattern of colored bars that US television stations use to calibrate their signal. This pattern was also used to test the Emergency Broadcast System across those same television screens. According to Elahi—who moved to Detroit from Washington, DC—the stripes also refer to the abstract paintings of the Washington Color School of the 1960s.
Elahi’s projects dealing with surveillance, privacy, migration, citizenship, and the challenges of borders have been presented at SITE Santa Fe, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Sundance Film Festival, the Gwangju Biennale, and the Venice Biennale.
