The series examines algorithmic censorship on social networks, exploring how platforms implement invisible content moderation influenced by American puritanism globally. It addresses how algorithms restrict visibility of specific content and hashtags while creating illusions of free expression, effectively isolating users within "invisible prisons." Key themes include: commodification of digital identity, algorithms as moral enforcers, and artists conforming to platform values to protect careers and followings.
What is Shadow Banning? It is a new censorship technique adapted to social media, where one is censored without knowing it, by an algorithm. This algorithm imposes moral codes tied to American puritanism, but on an international scale. Must an artist conform to these values? If not, can their career suffer at a time when work is judged by counting followers? Can it affect their sales or reputation? Constrain their choice of subjects?
One might wonder whether it is still relevant to exhibit female nudes. Was the nude in art history merely a long proof of male submission? Or on the contrary, is it an infinity of Venuses — those first divine representations bearing the voluptuous features of fertility goddesses? As a man, can I still paint a nude? If I paint a male nude, is it gay art? Are robots already the guardians of good morals? Are we not tempted today to do as the robots do: censor without confronting?
The oils in contemporary colours bring a revisited Montmartre touch to a virtual Salon des Refusés. The flat, graphic faces recall Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon. Not so long ago, just a few streets from here, the prostitutes who orbited La Ruche were being painted. In an entirely different context, but in the same place, bored and sulking models lounge in classical poses against backgrounds borrowed from modern painting. Their bodies liquefy into graffiti as if today's outrage were found in the nude. They continue to shock, perhaps.