AES+F
Suspects with subtitle The Seven Sinners and the Seven Righteous is a study in indeterminacy, locating the Other in the Other, where psychosis or sanity, guilt or innocence, threat or promise are shown to occupy each body as much as or at the same time as any other. The work consists of a series of 14 large-scale photographic portraits featuring a frontal view of an equal number of girls, none of whom has yet turned 18, as well as an attendant performance element requiring audience participation. Seven of these portraits present children from a Moscow school, all daughters from well-to-do Russian families; the other seven — while formally identical to the previous portrayals, with young ladies in red lipstick, rouged face, donning colored crew neck shirts of their choice, set against a neutral background — the artists photographed inside the walls of a high security detention facility, portraying child murderers, each convicted of brutal, unmotivated killings.