(An anti-portrait in twelve objects and one broken mirror)
The self is the only thing we can never see the way we see others. We glimpse it only in reflection—mirrored, reversed—or in fragments: a frontal pose, a top-down view, a body distorted by angle or lens. Never whole, never direct. Self Assemblage begins from this estrangement, exploring identity as something inherently unresolved, fractured, and constantly reconfigured.
This series of conceptual self-portraits resists the traditional notion of clarity. It embraces instability and multiplicity, navigating the ambiguous space between how we see ourselves and how we are seen. In a time of relentless self-performance—both online and offline—the work asks what it means to inhabit a self that is always in flux.
The process began with a question: how do others define me? I invited friends and strangers on social media to describe me in one or two words. Their responses—affectionate, obscure, playful, tender, harsh—were diverse and often contradictory. Each word became a prompt for an image, constructed not through posing, but through metaphor. A sponge. A feather. A magnifying glass. A soap bubble. These objects substitute for presence, evoking mood, texture, or perception. The body is both there and not—suggested rather than shown.
Rather than assert identity, Self Assemblage disassembles it. It acknowledges the impossibility of ever fully capturing the self, favoring implication over exposition, ambiguity over articulation. The images reflect a self refracted through language, materials, and gesture—at once intimate and ungraspable.
This is not a journey toward resolution but toward complexity. Photography here becomes a means of unraveling: a visual language that complicates rather than clarifies. Each frame is a proposition, a contradiction, a mirror that doesn’t quite reflect. Together, these fragments create an archive of becoming—where identity remains fluid, shifting, and always just out of reach.
