Art Abroad #15: Big Brother

After feasting on what had become our customary lunch fare in Paris—a Mixte sandwich (ham and cheese on a baguette), frites, and a bottle of red wind—at a café near the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, we stumbled upon a humble, inviting gallery just a few feet down the narrow street. As we stepped inside L’art de Rien (translation: The Art of Nothing), an Orwellian aura enveloped the gallery. A alarming warning—”Big Brother Is Watching You”—appeared everywhere. The exhibition (curated by Isabelle Lebre) consisted mainly of posters by various artists, ranging from overtly political to humorously absurd, but also included videos, sculptures and other forms. Spurred on by government plans to install more than a thousand surveillance cameras throughout the city by 2012, the 1984-inspired exhibition extended beyond the gallery, as a group of a dozen artists put up posters in place of the hundred or so proposed CCTV cameras in the 18th arrondissement, where the L’art de Rien is located. “The goal is not to condemn, but to think,” Lebre said.