Surfing the net for inspiration, I came across a few past urban camouflage interventions that play with the idea of concealment using various techniques and materials including photography and paint, found objects in commercial spaces and designed tarp.
Two artists use photography to blend themselves in with the environment. Liu Bolin (below) is a Chinese artist whose “invisible” pieces are part of collections titled Hiding in the City and Camouflage. Bolin created the works to protest the actions of the Chinese government, who shut his studio down in 2005. He paints his whole body to match his surroundings and then takes a photo of himself, spending sometimes up to 10 hours on one photo.
Desiree Palmen is Dutch artist who also uses photography to produce her camouflage art. To create the site-specific suits, (including the one below), Palmen photographs a precise location and then paints the image of the place onto a suit by hand. A person then wears the finished suit and poses in the original location – trying to blend into the space as much as possible.
Urban Camouflage, a project conceived by German artists Sabina Keric and Yvonne Bayer in 2007, deals with the question of how to camouflage oneself and one’s identity in the commercial space. The artists wear costumes constructed from materials found in a store (usually big-box stores) to blend into the surroundings.
Here’s a video to see the camouflage in action:
To make urban environments more aesthetically pleasant, Iikka Airas and Markus Wikas designed artificial foliage in their project Camouflage to physically conceal fencing and scaffolding at construction sites.
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