TILL THE CAMERAS DO US PART: OONA MARRIES THE SURVEILLANCE STATE

Most weddings involve two people in love. Artist OONA’s wedding was a little different. The bride wore a surveillance-inspired dress, the ring was a functioning camera, and the groom was nowhere to be seen. Then again, she was marrying the surveillance state.

On October 16, 2026, the anonymous artist staged her wedding to David at London’s Shoreditch Arts Club, bringing her seven-year performance project Dear David: A Surveillance Love Story to a wonderfully absurd conclusion. David is a real person, a CCTV Data Manager at Transport for London who has spent years retrieving footage of OONA performing in front of the city’s surveillance cameras. What began as a bureaucratic exchange turned into an unlikely love story involving more than 400 emails. The two have never actually met.

With an empty space at the altar and cameras watching the ceremony, OONA exchanged vows with a system that knows her identity while the public doesn’t even know her face. The eight-part series now lives on the Tezos blockchain, where footage once controlled by the surveillance state becomes art that OONA can own and share on her own terms.