PORTRAITS (GUARDS) 2010 – 2012, is a series of videos of guards working at the Peabody Essex Museum, the oldest Museum in the United States. The video of Carrie, the first guard portrayed, was part of the exhibition at PEM where she would surveil her own video portrait for 12 months. Guards are visible, yet at same time invisible. Guards are surveilling the visitors and are themselves surveiled by their supervisors with video cameras. To surveil and to be surveiled are equally constitutent elements of their identity. The videos are mostly silent. Only once in a while you hear the sitter‘s favourite song. Songs included: „Lakita‘s Theme“, ’Like a Prayer,“ „Close To Me,“ „Siren Song,“ „Only Love Can Break a Heart,“ „Lose Yourself“.
The PORTRAITS (GUARDS), guarding the Uniform-exhibition at Fondazione MAST, are Bernard W. Balser, Michael Boudreau, Carrie Buckles, Bill Buttimer, Elaine F. Eliuk, Mary Johnson, Neil Sicard and Joseph Twohig, displaied alternating on four screens.