Tag Archives: self-portrait

Where is Narcissus?

Spending school holidays in my grandparent’s country house meant that each time there would be a different product waiting to be sold, occupying one of the rooms.  The excitement of seeing what was stacked up was almost more exciting than seeing family.

One of these products was the narcissus flower.  Opening the room and being hit by the intense, almost toxic smell was as impressive as the mountain formed by the flowers.

The region was well known to grow the flower and furthermore, the small creek that was walking distance from the house was said to be the same body of water that Narcissus saw his own reflection and feel in love, the same body of water in which he drowned.

His story has always interested me, as I could never imagine liking myself enough that I would fall in love.  Negative feelings about self-image is much more prevalent for the general population and myself.

In this series I wanted to show bodies that were altered by their own reflections to represent the fluctuations within our own self-image.  It is our thoughts, our own reflections that cause distortion.

 

 

Balat House

I had memories. S/He had memories. We had memories. They had memories. Those were just fleeting moments that are imprinted on our minds and etched onto the landscape where it occurred like the remains of a rusty nail holding up the portrait of a lost loved one.

Balat is a neighbourhood of Istanbul that remains unchanged and not developed for many decades. Visiting this place is almost like time travelling and watching the memories of those around you that you are yet to meet, yet to talk and yet to touch.

Void of the 5 senses, you can feel the essence of this place through your aura and through your physical cage. You can feel their love, their pain and their loss. You can imagine their dreams, fears and desires.

Digital Identities

Whilst I was deciding which profile picture to use in a social networking site, I realised that we have never been this open about our own identity or how we want it to be perceived by the people around us. We choose to show an image of our self to the rest of the world and allow judgments to be made about who we are.

I collected 15 of my own profile pictures and layered them together to show more of myself in one go. I continued this process with images of my classmates  to explore the identity they chose to share with the world or at least with everyone except for the black listed “limited profile” individuals…

Like Idris Khan, I have used mostly appropriated images but unlike Kahn these images were not “works of art”.  The result is something resembling abstract painting and in a way the identities of the individuals become blurred. The illusion of sharing one’s identity is thus broken.  Do we really show our true self with those photographs or is it just the illusion of self?

I don’t let myself

I don't let myself