Nadia Jaber presents a very thorough critique of our contemporary world with her art opening About:Blank at No Free Bread Gallery. Conscientious of how human society is now metered by digital tolls and connection ports, Ms. Jaber attempts to reflect the malleability of our society in response to these abrupt changes to our innate forms of human communication through computer networking. Yet, what distinguishes her own creative expression of this impromptu transition, acutely pervasive within the last decade, is in her cohesive statements found within each piece.

In other words, it is common to critique the digital age. Indeed, this is the key melody we find being sung in contemporary art. Yet, to do so with a confrontationally novel poetry, like Ms. Jaber, is worthy of commendation. For one, there is an appropriate mirthfulness in reaction to this diluvial information hazard; instead of incentivizing moribund passions, Ms. Jaber presents us with a comfortable passive enjoyment of the conformation of our lives to a social movement which is beyond our control.

501 Not Implemented is a keen example of the critique of human sexuality now being expressed digitally. It is now simple and convenient to be transiently vulgar, debasing, and self-gratifying; this is certainly in antagonism towards the promising merits of instantaneous forms of human interaction. Yet, with a cheeky titular riposte, Ms. Jaber affirms there is a soul before there is an action upon a machine. Here, Ms. Jaber holds an ideal of love through the humorous confrontation of venal sexual forms now so effortless to be contemptibly thrusted into the world with a technological malfunctioning message of “501 Not Implemented” with the social (computer) networking request.

Fundamentally, Ms. Jaber is asserting that technology is not an end in itself. It requires navigation and command from an outside world – one which possesses her “analog” media of crayons, sewn fabric, etc. – in order to promote equilibrium and upward lift of the human spirit toward its inconceivable predestination. This, then, returns us to the immortality of wisdom and the pursuit of knowledge to better learn how to use this potency to its ideal designs – which is perennially away from the wants of the self and onto the indefinite needs of a greater goodness tomorrow.