Julia Weist is the only licensed private investigator in America whose work is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art. In 2022, the artist positioned her practice as the investigative experience required to earn a license and was approved; she now has access to information that’s collected and sold to law enforcement, including a database of timestamped images of vehicles on the road.
In a series of works made with this access, Weist presents surveillance photos of cars layered over satellite photography showing the location of image capture. With OUTATIME the system has picked up souvenir plates affixed to cars by fans of Back to the Future, creating a partial map of where these aficionados are located in the United States. PCE reveals instances when cars on the fringes of movie sets are accidentally documented by real world monitoring (PCE is an alphabetic sequence set aside for fictitious license plates in TV and film). Other pieces in the series show the results of searches for words on bumper stickers and vanity plates: honk, proud, satan, artwork and found. The widely varied landscapes shown in the works—from the deserts of the southwest to the lush greenery of the east coast—begins to represent the scale of this wide-spread surveillance.
OUTATIME, 2024
37 13/32 x 51 inches
archival pigment print
Edition of 3 + 1AP
PCE, 2024
18 5/8 x 31 25/32 inches
archival pigment print
Edition of 3 + 1AP
Honk if you’re driving or horny or love Jesus or if parts fall off or if a kid falls out or if Hellen Keller is a fraud or if you can see my weiner or if you’ve never seen a gun fired from a vehicle or if you do everything people tell you to do or if you’re the drama, 2024
29 1/16 x 54 3/8 inches
archival pigment print
Edition of 3 + 1AP
Proud, Proud American, Proud to Hire American, Built Proud, Proud Veteran, Community Proud, Proud Local, Proud Mom, Proud Dad, Proud Alumni, Proud Ally, 2024
28 13/16 x 53 3/8 inches
archival pigment print
Edition of 3 + 1AP
Found from the DRNsights Database, 2024
11 1/4 x 19 7/8 inches
archival pigment print
Edition of 3 + 1AP
Artwork (South Carolina) from the DRNsights Database, 2024
11 1/4 x 19 7/8 inches
archival pigment print
Edition of 3 + 1AP
Satan from the DRNsights Database, 2024
11 1/4 x 19 7/8 inches
archival pigment print
Edition of 3 + 1AP