Masters Exhibition 2023
University of Northampton
An Exhibition on
Fragmented Identity
“Artworks should be as diverse and non-normative as nature. Why do we seem to love defining opposites? What good does it do us? Mushrooms have eighteen thousand genders; how do you build, let alone practice, social norms at that party? You don’t. And that’s the kind of party – in some post-avant-garde, dystopian-utopian dialectic – I thought we artists were supposed to be throwing: shattering norms, forging ruptures, not seeking beginnings or ends, dredging out anarchical forms of ethics as well as perverse, unsanctioned, unverifiable meanings and returns.”- Angela DuFresne
My Reasoning
In this module, my objective was to examine the process of identity fragmentation and the diverse methods through which individuals shape and curate their identities particularly within the tattooed subculture.
My aim was to express something of this fragility or changeability of identity via the medium of paint. Rather than oversimplifying concepts for the sake of commodification and instagramability I was interested in individual complexity and the difficulties of a representational (do not read realistic) portrait.
I narrowed my focus to women and those assigned female at birth, which allowed me to draw more interesting connections and disparities between my sitters and their incredibly subjective experiences. Many of them operating in male-dominated environments, present as androgynous or identify as non-binary.
Talking my subjects about how their identities had formulated over a number of years caused me to want to explore this changeability via paint.
After researching artists such as Nikolaus Antoniou who often uses several figures and a lot of white space, I began experimenting visually with dual figures on the canvas as a means of expressing the idea of the inner self and the outer self, or as in popular psychology, a Jungian idea of the shadow self.
It subverted the notions of which figure is the most accurate representation of the sitter as the inner (blue) figures often tower emotionally over the more ‘real’ presented self in the foreground.
Neither figures have photorealistic qualities in the colour palette or paint management, allowing for an obfuscation between real and unreal. This was to present the notion that identity and acting are often intermingled, much as we become different versions of ourselves around different people groups, moving between and adhering to different facets of ourselves.
Artists are utilising creative approaches to convey new ideas about historically marginalised communities, thinking of Kehinde Wiley’s paintings of black sitters in historical poses.
The work was also heavily influenced by artists that disrupted the surface and visual integrity of their paintings from Gerhartd Richter’s to Andy Denzler. Rather than creating immediately legible images, I embraced the challenge of avoiding an excessively polished representation; emulating the unfinished style of Alyssa Monks or Cristina Troufa.
Portraying individuals from marginalised communities required a thoughtful approach. A challenge occurred navigating the ground of the non-binary figure. I was intrigued by a conversation with the sitter where it was expressed that ‘non-binary doesn’t owe you androgyny’…
Art is a blank imaginative space and I had wanted to re-work a modern understanding of the colour pink as a non-gendered colour as well as notions of what non-binary ought to look like. However the canvas became an entrapment into a heteronormative space for the sitter, becoming another area for their own gender struggle.
Wanting to remain extremely sensitive I realised I needed to be more intentional about creating a ‘Third Space’ in my work, a place where third gender, notions of tearing traditional identity apart could occur. To this end I decided to make a final painting, synthesising my approach and all the techniques I had learnt to paint a figure in such a way that a dual portrait wouldn’t be necessary to convey the aims of the fragility or movability of identity.
Upon reflection if our own identity shifts in the course of our lifetimes there should be no reason for not accepting the changing identities of others in a world that always has been and always will be on a sliding spectrum.
