Lauren Lee McCarthy Swaps Stories of Saliva and Surveillance

Lauren Lee McCarthy's solo exhibition Bodily Autonomy at UC San Diego's Mandeville Art Gallery uses humor and hyperbole to show how biosurveillance is common, both voluntary and covert. The show is built around two ongoing series, Surrogate (2021–ongoing) and Saliva (2022–ongoing), which examine how people are surveilled when they exchange biological substances. In the video "The Intended Parents" (2021), McCarthy offers prospective parents access to an app that shares real-time data on her daily life, while in "Saliva Bar" (2024) visitors donate their saliva and take home a stranger's. The exhibition continues through May 25 and was curated by Ceci Moss.