UNCOVERED: Challenging Social Media’s Body Bias
 
 
In our increasingly digitised age, it is becoming harder to separate the social from the technological. Social media, AI and new technologies have begun to touch every corner of our contemporary lives; the spectre of Big Data casting a dominant shadow over our every move. 
 
UNCOVERED ambitiously and defiantly explores the role platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly known as Twitter), and others, play in the intersections of mental health and body image. Featuring a collaborative series of works spearheaded by artist Sam Dawood and including Jennifer McCord and Lydia Reeves, the series aims to harness the power of collective artistic action. Creatively subverting the nakedness of the subject’s bodies, they speak out against the harmful, and often unregulated, censorship of fat Black femme bodies online. Offering an illuminating encounter with sculpture, photography, and the dialogue between the two, the artists express the need for policy change.
 
As more and more people join the conversation, fostered by activists/researchers such as Dr Joy Buolamwini, Cathy O’Neill and Safiya Umoja Noble, the struggle for online agency and equity grows. A need for transparency and accountability is crucial if we are to live in a society where everyone can feel safe, seen and secure when engaging with each other online. 
 
This catalogue acts as an entry point for those wishing to understand the real life implications of existing in virtual spaces as marginalised people.