Global Soap (2000-2001) was made by sifting through a massive collection of headshot stills taken from a source as contemporary and ubiquitous as reality shows: televised soap operas from around the world. The melodramatic expressions of the performers are ordered according to type, then sampled and re-edited into grid arrangements that form a kind of iconographic study of emotional codes, half real and half illusory, of our time. Rosefeldt’s analysis of the repetitive gestures, facial expressions and situations appearing again and again in the soaps points to the genre’s universal vocabulary and opera-like pace and choreography.