Swiper

Swiper is an artist's book chronicling an unlikely sequence of events that unfolded in the summer of 2023: After going out for drinks with a man named Joshua whom she met on Tinder, 25-year-old New York City resident Alexis Douge spent the night with her date back at her Brooklyn apartment-only to find out the next morning that he had stolen her pair of Tabis. Alexis posted a series of videos on TikTok recounting the situation, which immediately took social media by storm and sparked an Internet-wide craze for the newly dubbed "Tabi swiper." The publication documents the story's viral reception across social media-stylized in the visual language of early means of Internet-mediated communication such as text-based chat clients and message boards- while shining a spotlight on the Internet lore surrounding Maison Margiela's iconic split-toe silhouette. Edwin Tran's Swiper is a 2024 recipient of the Visual Artists: Creation grant from the Toronto Arts Council. Published by flana flana books, 68 pages, 4.375 x 7 in., softcover, 2024, ISBN 978-1-0690508-0-9