Labels and categories allow us to make sense of the world in bulk: They are shortcuts that serve personal sorting systems and social constructs alike. Despite their seeming efficiency, their axiomatic nature leads to errors and oppressive dynamics. This project focuses on the effect of biases on self-image, on the ways we resist labeling and the conscious choices we can make towards positive stereotyping.

Public Moment 1

The purpose: To show the impact of exposure to biases and labels at an early age. In what ways do words shape us?

What was presented:

A series of drawings describing a personal experience of growing up surrounded by labels and biases (integrated in the text below).

2 audio pieces: 1 on how people perceive biases and labels and 1 personal story.

A soundboard: A small instrument ("Characterization Generator") that treats labels as pieces of sound. How we deal with them is in our hands, like keys on a keyboard.

The installation included a feedback form from which the Repository was created.

Read

Read a short and simple story about a personal experience with labeling. The visual and auditory elements are there to enhance it.

Listen

Audio pieces made from various voices that shared their thoughts and experiences on the topics of bias and labeling. Do you see yourself in their descriptions? Is there a similarity of emotion?

If you'd like to be interviewed and have your voice in one of the songs that will follow, please contact me.

Characterization Generator

Feel the power of adjectives and choose yours. How do the "bad" words that affect us become bad and are all "good" words good? How important is context? Is repetition overwhelming? Does it become desensitizing at some point? Can repetition of "good" words change the narrative and affect the way we see ourselves and others?

Instructions: You need a desktop or laptop with a keyboard. Use your keyboard to play [not the mouse]

Repository

Read other people's stories and feedback on the project. Finding out how common our experiences and emotions are gives us strength and new ways to resist assimilation.

Feedback form

Be part of this community and empower others: Share your thoughts and experiences, give feedback. What shaped you? How do you deal with labels?

Public Moment 2

The purpose: To expose systemic bias.

What was presented:

A "game", demonstrating how systemic exclusion supports labeling, based on the actual directives of the latest US administration.

A video piece with main source material TV ads from the 80's and 90's.

Systemic bias game

In a dystopian present, marginalization is also taking place through the elimination of words that gain their position in the public dialogue through decades of social struggle.

Important: Once you choose your words (at least five), scroll to the end. A "Next" button will appear.

Watch

A video piece on the systematic exposure of generations to stereotypes that create a deep sense of inadequacy and set impossible standards. Its duration is meant to reproduce the mesmerizing effect of the repeating themes that were reproduced multiple times per day during the golden television years: Today's algorithms are even more pervasive.

Public Moment 3 (coming soon)

The purpose: To demonstrate in depth how I deal with labels through the transformative power of language and play.

What was presented:
An audio walk with masks as points on the map. This last exhibition focuses on affordances, performativity and virtuality, in other words on the way out of the confines labels set for us.

Audio Walk

Extras

Thesis

thesisA5_ebook.pdf

This project aims to show that identity is not fixed, but layered and shifting, and that while categories, such as gender, age, and motherhood, operate as structuring forces, we can resist binary oppositions and pull towards multiplicity, using the potential and the generative qualities of language.

Empathy Training Mill

Kindness is a muscle. We can exercise it and use it to provide relief, support and encouragement to ourselves and others and make the world a little bit better. Non-verbal cues are as important as verbal ones. Look at how our words and actions create green interconnected murals of positive meaning.

Instructions: Insert your answers in the field and watch magic happen.

About

This art project is the product of research and experimentation conducted in the academic year 2024-2025 on the subject of labeling in connection to identity, or, in other words, on how words acquire their meaning, how they shape us and how we can affect them in return.

You can see more of my work and read about me at www.sans-systeme.com.

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