"Self-portrait with chains or denial becomes image", 2017.

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on April 15, 2021 at 9:35am

Curator’s Comments:  

This 2017 Self-portrait with chains or denial becomes image appeared randomly on the site, and I enjoyed viewing the piece outside the context of your other photographic works.  I also appreciated revisiting your statement about these images, and thinking about your desire to create unpretentious conceptual narratives.  Some of the single-frame stories are quite obvious in communication, while others create ambiguity for me.  This piece falls into the category of the later.  I also consider that the dramatically changing shifts in social interactions over the past year cause me to reframe the juxtapositions in the pictures.  The empty whiteness of the large amount of negative space, and the white shirt in this image create a sense of isolation. The heavy reflective qualities of the chains, and empathetically imagined physical burden create a sensory experience in the viewing. There is a sense of self-imposed constriction even before knowing this piece is a self-portrait. The gravity of the self-denial is rather poetically communicated in the asymmetry of the space as well as the heavy chain.  The viewer considers what is absent on the left of the figure; there is a weight in the nothingness.