Set and Setting, 2024
Photo Elysée, Platforme 10, Lausanne

The title Set and Setting is taken from the study of psychedelic drug use. It refers to the need for a positive relationship between the user’s state of mind and the environment in which the drug is consumed, to avoid bad trips. In today's visual cultures, images themselves can be read as the quintessential dematerialised drug and currency of our era. This ’currency’ or ’drug’ is traded and distributed through a highly commercialised oligopoly of sharing platforms such as TikTok or Facebook. 

In this global context of visuality, Swiss artist Tamara Janes is fascinated by how we see, question and change the pictorial condition of (post-)modernity. She addresses these issues with a unique blend of high-end and low-end sources that engage audiences and humorously exposes aspects of our compulsive everyday relationship with images. She uses long-term artistic research to achieve her goals and assumes the role of an ’imagineer’ – a composite term combining the words image, imagination and engineer – because she questions, (re-)constructs and reinvents the images she makes or finds.