Since Sept. 11, 2001, government surveillance has become ever more prevalent. So, too, has surveillance art. In one famous case, after mistakenly being placed on a U.S. government terrorist watchlist, University of Maryland faculty member Hasan Elahi began documenting nearly every waking moment of his life—via photos, debit card transactions, GPS location—and posting it all online (“Hasan Elahi,” Arts and Entertainment, March 30, 2011). Extreme perhaps, yet his actions are not so different from what many of us blithely do every day, through social media and other online pursuits. A new exhibition at the Maryland Institute College of Art attempts to encompass all the ways in which individual privacy is eroding. Titled Under Cover, the exhibition takes on “the fluctuating definitions of public and private space, shelter, and surveillance.”

Under Cover is the culmination of the Exhibition Development Seminar, a year-long, trial-by-fire course in which MICA students plan and execute every aspect of a major exhibition (“Risk/Reward,” Feature, Jan. 31, 2007). The seminar began in 1997, initiated by MICA Curator-in-Residence George Ciscle, and has since produced numerous intriguing exhibitions, from solo shows to an exhibition on slavery to last year’s stellar Baltimore: Open City. But this year’s iteration was unusual. “This is the first time we came into a session with nothing,” instructor Jeffry Cudlin says. “Usually a topic is prechosen.” The theme the class settled on seemed to resonate personally with the students, many of whom are in their early 20s and have grown up in a less than private world. “It’s normal to be watched now,” student Tahira Christian says. “You even have to watch what you Google,” fellow student Logan Dixon agrees.

Eleven artists took part in the show, some by commission, in mediums ranging from photography to painting to video to installation. The students were divided into seven teams with each team responsible for some aspect of the show, including the web site, graphic design, gallery design, and curation. The result is an exhibition that, while a bit amorphous in theme, remains a professional endeavor with a few real standouts.

“Wearable Portable Architecture,” a large installation by New York artist Mary Mattingly, is first to greet the visitor. The piece is a literal interpretation of the concept of the “digital nomad,” a person who works remotely via computer and thus is not bound to a particular geographic location. Mattingly created insulated costumes equipped with GPS and internet, powered by solar panels embedded in the hoods. The outfits—which are khaki, with built-in backpacks and a bag that holds urine, water, or perhaps a conversion system from the former to the latter—are vaguely post-apocalyptic, like something from the desert planet in Star Wars. Attached together, they do double-duty as a tent that rests on a spidery aluminum structure reminiscent of a Louise Bourgeois sculpture. The arrangement, while ingenious, is clearly impractical. The piece is, however, a humorous extension of something we have come to consider normal, and it raises questions about what shelter and home mean in an age in which we are less and less tied down.

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