Level of Confidence features pictures of 43 students who disappeared in Mexico in September, along with a comparison of a camera snapshot and its closest match.
Born in Mexico-City, Lozano-Hemmer’s artistic pedigree and his drive for innovation are rivalled by his sense of social responsibility. That combination has shaped his work throughout his distinguished career.
One such example is Lozano-Hemmer’s Level of Confidence (Nivel de Confianza in Spanish).
Lozano-Hemmer developed the piece using a face-recognition camera that was trained with the faces of 43 students from a teacher training college in Ayotzinapa, Mexico, who disappeared in September. The camera used military-level algorithms to find which student’s facial features look most like those of the person standing in front of the camera. The camera gives a “level of confidence” of how accurate the match is.
Although there can never be a perfect match, the exercise is a poetic symbol of the constant search for the 43 disappeared Mexican students.
Lozano-Hemmer’s work is featured in the collections of numerous institutions including the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.
Level of Confidence will be exhibited at Concordia’s FOFA Gallery from March 27 to April 10 to commemorate the six-month anniversary of the disappearances.
Lozano-Hemmer will receive the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in Ottawa on April 8.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, winner of 2015 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.