Eli Cortiñas works with video and installation, using found footage to examine systems of representation and control. Her work critiques found media and commercial platform filters that create a ‘new improved skin’. Through collage-like compositions, she merges sourced material from films, videos, and social media with self-recorded Snapchat-filtered content and AI-generated stock images, creating a network of fluid, hybrid bodies and beings. Informed by Michel Nieva’s concept of ‘Science Fiction Capitalism’, Cortiñas investigates how contemporary technologies control bodies and behaviours through automation, surveillance, and biometric capture. Behind user-friendly interfaces lies the erosion of agency and consent—an atmosphere increasingly aligned with emerging fascisms and autocratic governments. Surrender, Dorothy! (2025) presents a collage-like audiovisual narrative across two video channels, wallpaper, and metal objects, combining physical and digital elements. The work exposes the continuities of psychological control from the domestic space to the threats of public space: the keys functioning as housebound emblems of resistance, loss, and the hope of return. The title references The Wizard of Oz (1939), in which actress Judy Garland was costumed to appear as a child, masking her physical maturity to fit a prescribed feminine ideal. In this context, ‘surrender’ becomes a disobedient act, a refusal to conform to the soothing violence of techno-fascist aesthetics and their promise of safety through control. The artwork examines how technology, digital agents, and voice-activated systems have become increasingly feminized, performing as submissive, demure servile agents, drawing a line between past and present modes of gendered control.

WORK IN THE EXHIBITION: Surrender, Dorothy! (2025), 2-channel video installation, wallpaper, metal pipes, aluminium panels, dimensions variable, sound, colour, 8'. Courtesy of the artist, Wouters, Belgium, House of Chappaz, Barcelona