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Comedian finds photo of herself in art installation, unravels weird mystery on Twitter

Step aside Sherlock, time for some real detective work.

Isobel Hamilton

on November 29, 2017

Bisha Ali is a British comedian, but she can now also take the mantle of investigator extraordinaire.

Ali recently had something very odd happen to her, and before long it snowballed into a full-blown mystery.

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It all began with a message from a friend.

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Take a look for yourself.

This could seem like a fluke, the photo is blurred and obscured by text so it's hard to tell whether it really is the photo of Ali.

But wait, there's more.

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Ali identified a fair few comedians, who in turn weighed in and spread the story to even more oblivious comrades.

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Canadian artist Derek Michael Besant is the author of the project, entitled SNAPSHOTS. So why primarily British-based comedians? Well all these photos of these people have appeared together before, in the catalogue for the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe Festival -- which Besant attended with his exhibition In Other Words.

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The whole thing already pretty galling for the comedians and photographers whose images and work were used without their permission, but there's yet more to this story. In an interview with Avenue, the artist claimed he had taken the photos himself of pedestrians walking through the underpass.

"The City of Calgary was made aware of concerns about the temporary art installation in the 4th Street underpass," said Kurt Hanson, General Manager for Community Services in Calgary, in a statement.

"As part of the City’s investigation, we have been in contact with the artist. The artist has said that we should remove the installation. We will be doing this and are considering our next steps," he said.

Mashable reached out to Besant for comment but he is yet to reply.

Ali summarised her investigation thusly.

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This is only a small slice of the drama that unfolded on Twitter, but it definitely gives you a flavour of the mystery.

UPDATE: Nov. 30, 2017, 10:12 a.m. GMT Derek Michael Besant sent the following statement to Mashable:

"When I received some torn out pages from a handout flyer with these faces, my impression was they were already out in the public domain. Therefore, I thought they could be collaged as backgrounds to be further interrupted with text elements for the 4th Street community art-site concept. I intended my project to incorporate a theme of 'representations of strangers that could be from anywhere, in any city…' My premise was to open up a conversation centered around 'who are we - in cities'. I’ve initiated that the temporary artwork be removed immediately and want to apologize to all concerned. In no way did I ever mean to hurt anyone involved, and I am extremely sorry that this is the result of my misunderstanding."

Topics Celebrities