VENICE, Italy — Over 17 years, David Darchicourt worked with the National Security Agency as a graphic designer and art director, illustrating top-secret documents about government surveillance programs. Now he is the unwitting central character in a new exhibition that puts the spotlight on the spy agency’s imagery. Inside the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, a cavernous Renaissance library in Venice’s St. Mark’s Square, some of Darchicourt’s designs for the NSA have been placed on display among historic 16th-century pieces by famed Italian painters like Veronese and Titian. The former NSA employee’s work is featured as part of a project called Secret Power, created by New Zealand artist Simon Denny for this year’s Biennale international art show. Denny has brought to life images from the trove of classified files on government spying leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, exploring an often overlooked aspect of the revelations: the visual information they contain. The 32-year-old New Zealand artist selected a variety of graphics found in Snowden documents published by news organizations, including The Intercept, and set about incorporating them into a series of meticulously detailed installations that took him about 18 months to complete.















Denny obtained an eagle from a taxidermist in Germany and created a three-dimensional version of the emblem used by the NSA’s Special Source Operations program, which handles secret surveillance relationships with American companies like AT&T and Verizon. He placed the bird flying through brightly lit computer server racks that stand about 10 feet tall, surrounded by other NSA graphics that were revealed by Snowden, such as the wizard associated with a mass surveillance operation called MYSTIC and a fox burning in a can of acid, a drawing that was included in documents about an NSA hacking tactic. The artist has also reconstructed the Terminator-style metal skull that appears as an emblem for an NSA program that maps the global Internet. Another piece focuses on documents from the NSA’s British counterpart, published last year by The Intercept, that discuss the use of deception and manipulation techniques against targeted groups of people. But Denny and his team didn’t solely rely on the work of journalists to inform the pieces they assembled. They also embarked on some investigating of their own, tracking down Darchicourt, the NSA’s former art chief, and turning him into a focal point of the project. Darchicourt worked for the NSA between 1994 and 2012 and created images for its covert surveillance programs as well as for its public-facing work, such as a series of “CryptoKids” cartoon characters, intended to educate children about the agency. The CryptoKids feature in a coloring book the NSA produced for children, and they also have their own section on the agency’s website. The animal-based characters include “Rosetta Stone,” a globe-trotting, multi-lingual fox who makes and breaks codes, and “T. Top,” a computer-obsessed turtle who likes programming and the Internet. After he left the NSA, Darchicourt became a freelance graphic designer and started using websites like LinkedIn and Behance to network and promote his work, which is how Denny found him. In the display at the Venice library, the New Zealand artist included a large cartoon-like picture of Darchicourt, details about his background, and examples of his work for the NSA, all of which were mined from his online profiles and portfolios. Denny also commissioned Darchicourt to draw him a map of New Zealand and a cartoon of a lizard that is native to the country, and featured these in the Secret Power exhibit, too. But he didn’t tell the former NSA art chief he was being hired to work on a Snowden document-related exhibition; he kept that as a surprise for later.

“They are an insight into the environment the programs are maintained and proliferated within.”