Artificial ID

This series of portraits indicates the phenomenon of identity crisis. It strikes on multiple levels, affects locally yet globally, both at the level of individual cognition and in the context of collective behavior. Although we intend to unify socio-cultural structure with all the different politicized approaches, we are losing connection with reality, forgetting that the problem of identity crisis begins within ourselves, in the individual. Acquiring self-knowledge and self-awareness are the key activities of modern man. People driven by inertia unconsciously scrape trough life. In order to liberate, man must shake off all the established routes, all preconcerted patterns and models. The trend of 'equalization', syndrome of identity crisis, denies gender specificities, personality and primary sociocultural characteristics. Although preliminary outlined, this process is only apparent and superficial, creating a dissension, instead of the neutral and persistent connections.


I chose to portray writers H.Hesse, F.Kafka and V.Woolf, with respect to the existentialist theories based on notions such as subjectivity, autonomy, and accountability, and the freewill of the individual emphasizing the individual characteristics. I inverted this situation and made them universal by eliminating their identity when covering their eyes - the mirror of one's soul. The triptich is painted combining acrilyc and oil colors with collaged paper details such as that symbolic cover (each painting 160x140cm).


So, as Terry Eagleton wrote in The Idea of Culture: “It is dangerous to argue that the idea of culture today is in crisis, because when was it not? Culture and the Crisis go together. Culture has traditionally been the way we could drown our miserable particularity in the more powerful and comprehensive media. Culture-as-art was important because it allocated the appropriate values in an acceptable form. Reading, watching or listening, we leave aside our empiric self, with all its social, sexual and ethnic content, so we ourselves become the universal subjects.”