FEAR GOOGLE

In 2001, XVALA was born.

Contemporary artist Jeff Hamilton, better known as XVALA, is best known for his edgy and controversial pieces. Hamilton has often been scrutinized by his contemporaries as well as the media for his work; from framing a picture of Britney Spears with her head shaved to dumpster diving in the Silicon Valley.

Born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Hamilton moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in street art. Hamilton philosophy when it comes to art is that it’s science fiction. Using the digital age as a tool for his art form, he creates art to tell stories as well as challenge viewers to think against today’s obsession with the internet.

“A lot of good science fiction has been to question the world, that’s what I want to do as an artist.”

Going back to Oklahoma from time to time he tried unveiling some of his works, but they were never fully accepted.

“When I did the Britney Spears piece i actually showed it in Norman and I did a press release on it. The people who came into the gallery were shocked but they were laughing to, some people got really upset at me.”

Hamilton also made a monument to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie near Shawnee, Oklahoma. “The Brangelina”, a house made with sculptures and paintings of the Hollywood couple, was designed as a tribute to the couple.

“It’s like the internet coming to your house, that’s the way I viewed it. Your space has been taken over by other people’s lives.”

The house is available for people to live in but it came with a caveat: the tenants had to let the couple stay with them if they were to come to Oklahoma. Again, his art wasn’t appreciated.

“The people who moved in knew about the house. The people didn’t by it because of the art, they bought it despite it.”

Perhaps a sculpture of the couple above the master bedroom in an embrace was too much?

He may be most known though for his Fear Google and No Delete campaigns in which he cautions the dangers of uploading personal information into online files or clouds.

“Google had sucked my name into the web and there I was, I was looking at myself.”

Hamilton’s Fear Google campaign began as a personal crusade of reclaiming control over his name. The search engine was in it’s infancy at the time, only being three years old, and the extent of what the internet could do was still unknown. Although he continued to use Google for his work, Hamilton remained skeptical.

“I made up the word XVALA. I liked the lettering, I liked how it all laid out how it looked and I made a pronunciation for it.”

After filing and being approved for his new namesake, he went about starting a website for himself. Shortly after that it started showing showing up on Google, although the results were associated with him.

“I thought, this is the science fiction you read almost like Tron where you’re messing with a computer system and you get sucked into it and you have to fight for your identity.”

Admittedly not very savvy with the internet, Hamilton felt that this moment in time was the beginning of something.

“I remembered when Britney Spears shaved her head in Los Angeles and her meltdown, it was like instantaneous coverage. I thought to myself ‘wow this has never happened before’ that one thing is everywhere at once.”

Celebrities including Scarlett Johansson and Jennifer Lawrence had their iclouds hacked and their photos had become public. Johansson’s lawyer demanded the photos be taken off the internet, which prompted XVALA to do his No Delete gallery.

“I had shown the Fear Google Scarlett Johansson pieces in Los Angeles and that had blown up pretty big, it was kind of a chuckle though for a lot of people.”

Attracting the attention of press across the country, from the Huffington Post to Forbes, people were curious to know what was next for XVALA.

“I told her that i had been dumpster diving.”

XVALA took his campaign a step further when he used google search to find the homes of tech giants, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, and created sculptures from what he found in their trash cans.

Hamilton created a trash art gallery through his dumpster diving efforts. A notable piece in the gallery was a deflated basketball from the garbage of Kim Kardashian herself, even receiving a tweet from the day of:

“Let the party begin!”

“We give our information to the internet the same way we give our trash to the world, we just put it out there to be taken.”

XVALA’s art has been branded by people as shock art, using it only to garnish attention.

“I think the people who call me shock artist are the people in the media and the people who call me an appropriation artist are the people in the art world, and I’m really trying to reach the people outside of both.”

Hamilton has plans to open a museum to house his pieces in a permanent gallery for all to see; a modern, open warehouse-style building.

“That’s the museum,” Hamilton says laughing while pointing to a stick drawing of a building on a whiteboard . “It’s basically my blueprints.”

Hamilton’s current project is called “New World Order,” in which he will use 3D printed pieces in his gallery. Without discussing the theme completely, he plans to use classic science fiction novel ideas and make them real for people.

“I hope as an artist I can do something that’s need and also something that’s never been done before to get people to see a pivot point in our world today.”