Most people complain about being watched on the Tube. OONA married the man who does the watching.
On 16 October 2026, the anonymous performance artist tied the knot at Shoreditch Arts Club in London. Her groom was David, a CCTV Data Manager at Transport for London (TfL), who has worked there for around 30 years. The ceremony was the finale of Dear David: A Surveillance Love Story, a seven-year, eight-part project curated by Anika Meier for The Second-Guess.
It began in 2019, when OONA realised she could legally request footage of herself from the Underground’s cameras. So she started performing for them. She filed Subject Access Requests saying where she’d been, when and what she was wearing, and David, the man who processes them, dug out the clips. More than 400 emails later, the bureaucratic back-and-forth had become a love story, though the two have never met in person. OONA turned the footage into video love letters, in which she wonders whether he notices her outfits and finds her beautiful.
The wedding was every bit as on-theme. OONA wore a surveillance wedding dress and a working camera ring, while the cameras filmed everything. David was represented by an empty space at the altar. His vows promised to record, safeguard and know more, which could describe either a devoted husband or a very efficient CCTV network. OONA, who never shows her face and hides behind a veil and sunglasses, promised that only he would know her true identity. The paradox is the point: the public has no idea who she is, but the state does. She closed with “In sickness and surveillance.”
Behind the gag lies a sharp question. Marriage is a choice, while surveillance is a relationship you enter just by walking through a city. By giving the system a name, a personality and a husband’s role, OONA makes it look strangely human, reclaiming images of her body that she never directed.
All eight chapters now live on the Tezos blockchain, where anyone can check who owns what. OONA had to ask for her own footage, but she can now release and sell the finished works on her own terms. Her verdict: “They say love is blind. David sees everything.”
Dear David has been shown at HEK Basel, the V&A and OOR Studio’s Schlachter 151 in Berlin, and is a 2026 Lumen Prize finalist in Systems & Structures. The wedding was presented by HERVISIONS and Shoreditch Arts Club, in collaboration with The Second-Guess and Frieze Connect, and powered by Art on Tezos.