the factual self
When faced with a question like “who are you as a person?”, or when I’m asked to describe my identity, I often have a habit of going abstract to the point that I’m incomprehensible to most people. Who I am has always felt so absurdly complex and confusing that I can never truly find an accurate way to describe it nor can I fully visualize it myself. I spend a lot of time pondering who I am and self-reflecting on… basically everything, yet I still find I am a mystery to myself and to those around me.
When doing research in how I was going to handle this project I fell in love with Hervé Di Rosa’s ‘Naissance de la figure’ where he depicts bright colorful abstract shapes that form cells, atoms, microbes, etc. I’ve worked with depicting myself through flesh and bones in the past, and also have worked with fascinating microbiomes for other projects in the past, so this was perfect for me. When you have no sense of self, and are constantly second guessing who you are as a person, the one thing you do know is that you are made up of the same key elements everyone else is.