Omar Jaimes Rew

Omar Jaimes Rew Born in Toluca, Mexico, in 1984, Omar Jaimes Rew is a multidisciplinary visual artist and curator, renowned for his exploration of art through technology. He specializes in the use of experimentation through appropriation and remix as conceptual tools, questioning the notion of the author and the mass circulation of images.

His work includes multiple platforms, like video, installation, illustration, and photography. As a curator, he focuses on the relationship between art and new media, and he works on projects about videoart, sound art, and other types of art related to the digital culture.

Omar Jaimes Rew has a solid academic background, he has a BA in Digital Art and a BA in Visual Arts, both from the Faculty of Arts, UAEMex. Currently, he is studying for a master’s degree of Visual Arts in that same university. Besides, he specialized in Creative Coding for Animation and Video at CENTRO, CDMX, and he’s taking courses in Creative Artificial Intelligence.

He has been working at the Museo Universitario Leopoldo Flores (MULF_UAEMex) since 2010, and he has been the Area Manager of Curatorship since 2014. He has also been a lecturer at UNITEC in the areas of Architecture, Digital Art, and Industrial Design. His work has been included in Interactive Art and Generative Art group exhibitions, and he has participated in the Latin-American Biennial of Art and Artificial Intelligence. He has received awards like the PECDA Young Creators award for his work “Porn Glitch Camuflage”.

ARTWORK

Discriminación Tonal: Espectro de la desigualdad (Tonal Discrimination: Spectrum of inequality)
Instalation

“Discriminación Tonal” (“Tonal Discrimination”) is a video installation that examines the intricate relationship between skin tones and the Mexican economy. Inspired by the artwork “Economical Study of The Skin of Caracans (2006)” by Santiago Sierra, this work uses artificial vision to capture and analyze the skin tone of the members of the audience.

When the viewer interacts with the installation, the system’s camera registers the face of the viewer, and it calculates an average from the viewer’s skin tone. Using algorithms and data from the study of discrimination based on skin tones in Mexico made by INEGI in 2017, this artwork offers an estimate of the possible salary of the viewer based on their skin tone and other predictive data, like the areas of work with the most percentage of participants.

This palpable correlation between the skin tone and the salary is what makes “Discriminación Tonal” such a powerful piece of art. Through direct and personalized confrontation with discrimination based on skin tone, the artwork demonstrates, with its critical analysis, the injustices that are rooted in Mexican society, using technology to reveal inequality in its rawest and most immediate form.

Website
https://www.omarjaimesrew.com/