Spray the DNA away – an artist’s stand against encroaching genetic surveillance

We leave ‘genetic artifacts’ everywhere we go, and it takes little more than a bit of amateur DNA sleuthing to discern a startling amount about us from these traces. Through her ‘Stranger Visions’ series, consisting of masks developed from the genetic material of strangers, the American artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg grapples with some of the difficult moral issues of genetic surveillance. Another one of her pieces offers a solution: DNA-erasing sprays.