Denise Maud
Container
2025
c-print on paper
168,2 x 118,9 cm
Suitcase
2025
c-print on paper
84,1 x 59,4 cm
Denise Maud’s printed pieces, Container and Suitcase, show x-ray scanned objects investigated by Zurich and Marseille airport controls. Security methods, being rather selective and contradictory, ultimately shape societal power relations. Mainly devised to search for hazardous material before boarding, scanning operations quite often green-light herbicide or genetically modified plant, as if the two pose no danger later, especially in continuous use. With the two works, a question concerning visibility is posed: How can we evaluate our interconnections and what can our technology reveal or impose on us? These notions are uncovered when we slowly read Maud’s prints; vividly coloured layers of x-rays, in fact, become metaphors for opacity and transparency in our current time.
Denise Maud (1988, Zurich, Switzerland) received her MA at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) in 2022. She works with video, installation, and photography, focusing on the relationship between humans and nature. Machines play an increasingly central role in her practice, both as imaging tools and as objects of observation. She is drawn to the technical aesthetics of devices that make invisible layers of reality visible, as well as to machines that operate beyond human perception despite their constant presence in everyday life.
