What do faces mean to you? How do we think about our physical versus our virtual selves? How does surveillance culture allow us to rethink the portrait? How does forensic art engage questions of personhood?

Artist in residence Kathryn Smith and Alana Blignaut both have an interest in the face as a technology of identity and identification, and the ethics of the facial image. This conversation explores some of these questions in relation to individual and collaborative projects.

This informal encounter marks the mid-point in Kathryn Smith’s month-long residency at A4 in which multiple strands of her PhD research – which engages forensic cultures, practices and applications – are culminating. 

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Kathryn Smith is a visual and forensic artist currently completing a PhD as a member of the Face Lab research group at Liverpool John Moores University. Smith holds a senior lectureship in Visual Arts at Stellenbosch University. 

Alana Blignaut is a visual artist and researcher interested in the face, forensic aesthetics and algorithmic culture. Blignaut completed an MA (Fine Arts) with a focus in digital arts at Wits University in 2018.