Josh Rains

My work explores the impact of social media and new technologies on the relationship between the public and private realm. I am interested in how the exposure of personal information—whether offered up voluntarily, or it is distributed without our knowledge or consent—is eliminating privacy and how this has affected marginalized groups who have depended on anonymity to survive.

As I work through these themes conceptually, I reflect upon changes in our understanding of identity, personal boundaries, and self-representation while I re-present these images as paintings or drawings to decontextualize them from their source material.