Structures and systems of order are the predominant themes of Berlin based artist Menno Aden (*1972, Weener), known for his cartographic photographic works. Aden's photo series deal topographically and analytically with our built environment. Although mostly absent, his works always show traces of the human being.
Interiors of real living and working spaces from an unusual perspective. It seems as if someone has lifted the ceiling and replaced it with a scanner. In fact, the photographs consist of up to a hundred individual shots taken with a remote control and then digitally assembled. One associates dollhouses and at the same time thinks of surveillance.
With his series Room Portraits, Aden touches on the themes of surveillance and voyeurism, which are becoming increasingly mainstream these days, in an era of "surveillance capitalism", a term coined by economist Shoshana Zuboff.
In an earlier exhibition in 2006, Aden already addressed the question: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?", a phrase from Juvenal that translates as "Who guards the guards themselves?".