About Face 2003

According to critical thinker Mikhail Bakhtin, carnival exists as a "celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order" of the official world. It creates a second world or life in which all people are considered equal and in which one can take on any role or identity one chooses. Identity is thus deemed fluid, ambivalent and can be constructed in any which way one chooses. I address the particular existence of two bodies of identity, ‘official’ identity in the real world and 'unofficial' or 'carnival' identity that is taken on as an escape from reality.

The relationship between these identities could be compared to the human and his/her reflection in a mirror. The Self and the reflected image, twin or double appear exactly the same; however in their duality they have the ability to possess two different personas. The doppelganger which is a 'human copy' or an 'equivalent other', a menacing twin or a ghostly surrogate is at once identical to and completely opposite an individual. In carnival, the Doppelganger is that individual who in escaping the confines and rules of reality is allowed, for a short while, to let go and be whatever and whichever character he so pleases.

The Twins series (2003) depicts the individual in reality as well as its equivalent other, the Doppelganger, in a series of six diptyches. The purpose of the work is to explore the Self and Other who live or exist not in opposition to each other but in superimposition. I do not reveal which is the authentic and which is the copy, or even if there is one. Each diptych makes use of the same individual who possesses two separate personas and who lives are staged in separate times and spaces, settings or contexts. The subjects’ identities are thus made and unmade in a symbolic exchange between art and life and provides emblematic and representational clues as to what the roles are that are played and which purposes are fulfilled.

The 'Close up' (2003) series consists of four large-scale close-up portraits that combine specifically chosen individuals set within virtual or hyper-real landscapes that play with the viewer’s perception of the character. My aim is to get the viewer to define each individual within their specific grouping, pose and context and to subsequently define them 'selves' in relation to those characters. It is through stereotypical and archetypal stigmas society has lain out that one finds oneself perceiving and defining others in a particular way. The intention here is to expose such ideological particularities and break the pattern of stereotypical definition, as identity is never constant but always sinuous and ambiguous.