Unveil Winners Gallery

The Unveil contest invited students to explore the meaning of privacy through visual art, writing, and performance. View the 2026 winning artworks below.

Visit the Unveil Contest page for the 2027 submission process.

First Place

A mixed media sculpture that depicts a robin with the head of an old-timey security camera.
Visual Art

Bird's Eye View

Kade Kuba - Art & Design, Fourth year

"Birds Eye View" is a mixed media sculpture that depicts a robin with the head of an old-timey security camera. The work is meant to make viewers feel unnerved by who's watching them and how they're being tracked. Surveillance exists in every part of our lives, from cameras tracking who's entering and leaving Detroit to advertisers and scammers tracking your search history and data. The work channels the feeling of being watched that many feel and challenges the viewer to think about how much privacy they really hold in public and online spaces. By wrapping the form of a bird, something the majority of people hear or encounter everyday, into such an obvious sign of spectatorship causes reflection in its viewers.
A black and white image with the words “I wrap myself in a midnight boundary. A niqab of deepest…” fading into black on the right side.
Literary Art

The Architecture of the Unseen

Sukria Malique - Pharmacy, First year graduate student

"The Architecture of the Unseen" explores the niqab as a deliberate act of autonomy within a high-surveillance society. In a modern landscape where facial features are often reduced to data points for algorithms, I use the veil as a form of physical encryption to protect my individual rights.
The poem addresses the unique challenges of a Muslim woman navigating a "double gaze": a community that may expect me to be hidden and a broader society that often misinterprets my choice as a lack of agency. By reclaiming my privacy, I reject the social pressure to be critiqued based on my physical appearance. This work asserts that civil liberty includes the right to manage one’s own visibility. By shielding my face, I shift the focus to my intellect, my athletic drive, and my character. I am not disappearing; I am ensuring that I am known by the depth of my thoughts rather than the pixels of my portrait.

Second Place

A pencil drawing showing a young man drawing a protest sign at a table while a dark shadowy figure watches through a window; the same young man moving to the right side in the middle with protest signs in the background; and on the right side is a poster wall with a Missing poster of the young man.
Visual Art

Bordering on Dissent

Vivian Schmidt - Rackham School of Graduate Studies, First year

Inspired by the haunting Pomník obětem komunismu in Prague by sculptor Olbram Zoubek, which depicts a single man in various stages of physical decay, this piece explores a modern progression of state-enforced erasure. While Zoubek’s work reflects the Soviet-era suppression of Czechia, my drawing translates this concept into the digital age, illustrating how privacy and autonomous thought are dismantled until the individual themselves disappears.

The composition functions as a chronological timeline. On the far left, an individual prepares to attend a civil protest within the supposed safety of their home. Yet, the shadowed figure in the window, representing the surveillance of the present, signals the immediate death of privacy. This intrusion transforms a private act of conscience into a “crime” of non-conformity.

The center of the piece illustrates the weaponization of personal data. By featuring social media fragments and “loyalty” assessments, the work mirrors the contemporary American landscape where digital screening has become a tool for ideological vetting. Today, U.S. visa applicants and travelers are increasingly required to disclose years of social media history, where “anti-administration” sentiments can lead to denials, detention, or the revocation of status. In this context, speaking out is no longer a protected right but a liability that can bar a person from country or rip them away from their loved ones.

This piece serves as a stark reminder for a modern audience: when surveillance is used to enforce conformity, the ultimate cost is the personhood and freedom of the individual.

Third Place

Side angle of a circular fabric sculpture featuring abstract shapes, and fragmented organic shapes arranged in layers across the art piece.
Visual Art

Stitched In

Paige Lemmon - Art & Design, Third year

This piece explored the how our lives have become integrated with technology. This piece utilizes layers to show how human autonomy is always being reported on though surveillance and or digital footprints. The abstract shapes invade the composition like how technology reaches into all parts of our lives. The fabric source from clothing, is stitched into matching the adstraced spaces farther showing the integration of technology and surveillance.
A black and white image with the words “Can you imagine a world so silent that your secrets rested with you…” fading into black on the right side.
Literary Art

Voluntary Seizure

Jiwoo Kim - Engineering, Fourth year

This piece describes today's world where everything and everyone is under surveillance—Siri, Alexa, digital footprints, algorithms, cookies, and data leaks were all at the forefront of my mind while writing this poem. The author is nostalgic for a time they have never experienced; a time where privacy was not voluntarily stolen but belonged to the individual by default.