Performance And Self-portrayal -- a dialog and publication

Navigation, or finding your way around We are using a blogging technology here in an unusual method. The usual practice is for keen followers of the blog to be interested in the latest additions; we are asking you to start from the beginning and work your way through, giving each artist equal respect of attention. We have uploaded each submission in order of entry and so there are more than 70 artists figured here. Blogspot (the system you are on right now) will default to showing you the most recent entries. For the current submission there is probably more to read so look for "READ MORE"  At the bottom of the page, look for "OLDER POSTS","NEWER POSTS" to run through the chronological sequence; and, "MORE POSTS" which will take you to the previous 6 or 7 submissions. Another wrinkle is that last month's submissions are hidden further away. At the top look for the  ☰ and click through to find "Archive"  Use the down arrow to look a...

  As a Ukrainian-British multidisciplinary artist, designer, and photographer, I am keenly interested in art therapy, somatic and transdisciplinary approaches, and neuroaesthetics. I am delighted to submit my work for consideration, as exploring the intersection of performance to the camera and photographic self-portraiture is close to my heart. Throughout my 25 years of artistic practice, I have used photographs of my body and hand gestures as photo references and participated in performances to communicate my inner feelings and reflect on the topic. I had been involved in Contact improvisation and Five Rhythms groups and workshops and ran authentic movement classes. These experiences let me explore the link between body awareness and psychological experiences and explore the human condition, liminality, identity and perception. After experiencing traumatic events, this exploration became even more relevant to me as it led to physical symptoms. During the war in my homeland, Ukrai...

This project is an experiment of different paper mediums and photography turned into motion, thepaper may vary from, archival, silk, fabric and other printing mediums. The reason for this experiment is to reinterpret and relive my experience through printing, collaging and photography. This body of work is communicating my spiritual excursion or communications with my father’s ancestors, this publication functions as a blueprint for me as I am trying to navigate my spiritual lineage though ceremonies that are performed in my father’s side, this serves as a performance that can be relived in a book, this publication functions as verbal, motion and printed messages that can co-exist with our reality. My work explores the fantasies we hold dearly in our hearts and mind, they exist in the intangible world, we cannot express them physically however we can briefly experience them. These are type of fantasies we cannot touch them, maybe we can try to cherish them, they keep us on our toe, th...

  This image is from a series entitled SPACE MAPS in which I explored the idea of mapping the space we occupy and what happens when we change that by moving. It was taken while holding the camera and making a movement, in this case a sidestep. It was made in a room with mirrored walls, so show the self, reflected whilst moving, together with the surroundings visible to the camera. The series explores our relationship to the world around us, and how that changes each time we make even a simple movement. We take a step forward or turn around and our connection to the space we occupy alters drastically. These long exposures record what happens around us during those basic movements, and show the surroundings from a multiplicity of angles, the resulting sensory overload producing abstract images.

I did a performance during lockdown, and that is about humanbehavoir during that period, it was dark everybody wearing masks, and i just make a portret of a surrealistical personality who is eating a bread....im the oneWho is looking with my nude....... Dressed and undressed, eating and watching....... Human behavior

I am a London based photographer, artist and storyteller of Scotish - Iranian parentage. I explore transformation, through intuative self portraiture and embodied performance. I work with with notions of identity using environments which reflect my phycological, physical or emotional landscape. Using photo montage, moving image and performance in my self portrait process, which began in 1998. As a photographer and burns survivor, my self portrait process boosts my welbeing emotionally and physically. This liberating spiritual process enables me to embody and interpret potent feelings and themes I feel trapped, which I cannot seem to be express through words. Through the repetion (and recordings) of often slight, slow, intuitive movements, I begin to experince another relationship to my self and stories. The process enables me to tune in to my feelings and make contact with layers of trauma within my body. In 2017 I began a dance based embodied movement practice. This practice enabled m...

I am an artist/Photographer. I would be interested in sharing my work as I work in light painting photography. The artwork I'm sharing is a self portrait and part of my ongoing series "The Air We Breath" Light painting or light drawing ,as I use it, using light as 'paint' and the camera as a canvas with the intent to create a work of art or create an image that 'normally' wouldn't exist. Or in the case of this series, making the invisible 'Air' visible. The work is titled "Being devoured by the Abyss" where instead of showing what we normally see in the real world, I've taken the opposite and made the energy or air surrounding us visible thus show the 'dark matter' in the world and emphasising the way we can be enveloped by our surroundings, and hopefully drawing a connections to the importance of our surroundings even to the thing we cannot see, ie Air.

  From a position of 'not knowing' Ringe’s creative practice employs a without/within perspective and strategy to subjectively navigate the unknown. He creates theoretically ambiguous works, which explore the difficulty of communicating internal experience to an external audience. He draws on philosophical and theoretical positions which include, amongst others, Gaston Bachelard, Otto Bollnow, Emmanuel Levinas and Alfred North Whitehead, which have informed and shaped his practice. In the production of body drawings, the artist employs simple ties as restraints to thwart his normal bilateral co-ordination and movement. Effectively learning to move again Ringe arduously establishes his mind-body relationship anew. The records of his engagement with ‘unknowing’, the struggle of becoming, as a self-revelatory process are captured in both photographs and films of his journeys.

  A  piece from my  Tableaux  series. This work frequently combines original, small-scale dioramas with (self)portraiture. The characters portrayed in the series maintain some implied relationship with their paired faux-environment(s). A common theme in  Tableaux  is the intangible expectation of an undefined event. The series, as a whole, generally indicates unrest amongst banality; it implies a potential for the occurrence of something unusual and significant. However, specifics regarding these anticipated events are often intentionally vague and dependent upon individual interpretation.

I am obsessed with photographing water mostly the sea, self shadows and reflections. Seeing the images in my 'minds eye' are a devotional experience. 'Visual Poetry' images are created while in a state of Social Mystification' which I transfigure into sublime canvases of Reposeful and Spiritual Contemplation'.'Visual Poetry' embodies the work of Karl Marx, Aristotle, John Berger, Rothko, Kazimir Malevich and John Piper.

We are moving through hard times now, so the warrior of light should overcome the darkness inside and outside looking for the better version of myself. I use self-portrayal with performance component now to dig deeper into myself and the global process of humankind's upgrade towards the best possible management of our wild and spiritual nature. This photo is made on the exhibition "Dreams of Siberia" in the center of Moscow and then digitally processed to extract the main message of a biosphere-centric artist with a global voice.

I have a background in contemporary dance and performance and have created and performed my own solos. When I started exploring photography as a medium, self-portraiture came very naturally. I love the freedom it gives me to explore movement and expression and then crystallise moments of it in a photograph. My art is very connected to the notion of human nature and self-exploration. I use it to process and convey feelings. In self-portraiture, my body becomes the medium I use to compose a photo. I try to mold it and visually manipulate it to adjust to the needs of a particular project. As with performance, I need to embody a feeling, a character, and/or a state of mind, for a self portrait to make sense to me. The performative quality of self-portraiture allows for many layers of meaning and interpretation. Images can be relatable at a deep level of understanding even when they are not easily explained by logic.

I am especially interested in images of women, particularly as an older woman who isn't interested in 'getting work done'. I am curious about our responses to ourselves with the rise of social media and the endless narrative of women watching themselves, rather than being themselves, of seeing themselves through the lens of the onlooker, rather than as themselves, looking out. This image attached is a play with these themes . . .

My final module project was an installation piece called "Remembrance of day-dreams" that sought to connect my childhood bedroom with the person I am today. My practice as a multidisciplinary artist centres around the exploration of memory, consciousness, and the creation of personal narratives. I utilize photography, performance, and text to delve into the psychological underpinnings of our experiences and the stories we tell ourselves. My background in acting and theatre directing informs my approach to creating immersive installations that aim to uncover the myriad meanings and resonances inherent in liminal spaces. Through a phenomenological approach, I examine the ways in which we relate to ourselves, our environment, and our history, always striving to create a unique and evocative presence within my work. By exploring the formation of identity, the interplay between the internal and external worlds, and the poetic narratives that emerge from the clash of memory and co...

For me as an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on performance and thriving best at the intersections of media, there is so much overlap between my performance work and self portraiture that indeed most of any of the latter I’ve produced in the last 8 years has been through, in support and as byproduct of, the performance work. They have become completely interwoven.In the most recent performance works I have had other people behind the camera as help but under my direction and in the past I have worked mostly alone with the camera, something I will be doing more of again soon because I love the low-pressure, privacy and self-intimacy that comes with that, something I do believe gives a different quality to the work that can be interesting in itself. Working with the right people behind the camera can be an amazing experience with different capabilities (like moving camera shots for video, the cross pollination of two different artist’s practices, a fresh collaborative perspective b...

My practice moves between wearable sculpture, performance, photography, and film, exploring ideas of identity, belonging, and otherness. The transformative power of wearable sculptures helps to explore the self-doubled and camouflaged. I hide the presence of my person by masking race, social status, and class; I transform into a being who is constantly seeking a home, trying to understand what it means to be human, and questioning where I belong. I am interested in exploring the multiplicity of identity relationships of my self through the self-portrait and performance: how performance can alter my self-representation.

  I have been photographing since 1996 but for ten years before that I first trained as a theatre director and then became involved in many aspects of performance. Since lock down I have been making many more self portraits as part of my practice. I have a dedicated page on my website called "Performing Jojo" The imageI have entered is called: "Self-portrait listening to the third most beautiful love song ever recorded"

Self-portraiture can be an opportunity for performance to camera and photographic self-portraiture to intersect. I find myself often choosing to perform in front of the camera, using gestures, facial expression, wardrobe and props to aid the portrayal of a character, but I would still say that I am a self-portrait photographer, as I am not performing specifically for the camera. Instead, I am staging a different identity, and making an image from it. If we refer to artists such as Cindy Sherman, it could be argued that while Sherman performs various identity constructs to the camera through her series untitled film stills (1977-80), they are still self-portraits. In this sense, self-portraiture might be seen as a way of staging or performing an identity dissimilar from your own, and creating images that are viewed both as performances to camera and photographic self-portraits. While performance to camera and self-portraiture may overlap, there are instances where they differ completel...

 My artistic practice encompasses performance, photography, video, and installation. I examine my experiences as a neoliberal subject in contemporary consumer culture through a queer, feminist and anti-capitalist lens. Ideas of embodied presence and liveness are played with and called into question in my work. I view my work as self-portraiture, but not in the traditional sense. In some of the work, such as The Substitute series, I create photographic substitutes of myself in order to examine the act of looking and being looked at. In Visual Pleasure I posed on a stage with cut-out furniture and struggled to maintain the position I have allocated myself – that of the object of desire. On first reading these images appear to reduce the female subject to a 2-dimensional representation but she is captive in a world that she built up around herself. During the studio shoots, I positioned my body, angled the furniture cut-outs to minimize reflections, and directed my assistant to take t...

    I’m a performance artist and a photographer. All my works are very personal and is a kind of psychotherapy to me, through my performances I try to understand myself better or even cure. So I think I fit with the topic of your exhibition:) To illustrate my work I added photo from my performance Clay. It describes mechanisms of psychological projection and projective interjection. In this performance I was standing still smeared with a thin layer of clay and audience were encouraged to change my shape in any way they wanted. In the end clay dried. I wanted to show that people are constantly molding our image, and the image in their heads has nothing to do with us. They constantly giving us new forms and meanings, driving us into a certain pattern and subsequently changing us into this alien form, so we begin to perceive ourselves with their eyes. And often people load us with so many meanings and their projections are so strong that it is impossible for us to move and return...

My work explores what can be defined as a photograph in the modern day. Methods stem from an interest in contemporary and historical photography, painting and sculpture - resulting in nonrepresentational photographs that are created through performance based processes and installations. Due to the scale of the work the body plays an important role in its creating, installation and view - all components exist in a performative space where aspect is an autonomous recording of the artist and intent.

The interests within my practice at large lie with portrayals of the body and how we heal through and with them. This has often been framed within the female body and it’s mis/treatment within healthcare settings.Using textiles and sculptural techniques, the nature of performance and self-portrayal comes through in the form of costume creation. The costume allows for sculptural elements to overtake the human form and in the context of my own practice, takes the internal and visualises it on the external. Thinking through the work as a visual form and way of healing, textile coverings allow the self-portrayal to embody something beyond the human form, a monstrous re-imagining of the self. For me, the performative aspect comes through within the use of video as documentation of the wearing of the costume. The creatures created exist within these videos as a way to create a barrier between the self and the audience, while creating an intimacy between the costume and its wearer that gener...

my practice evolved around the body (my body) in space. My aim is to explore self-representation over assumed presentation. As a migrant and person of colour I aim to explore the inferred interpretations of migrants and the black and brown experience in a world where so much stereotyping and misinterpretation of culture and custom has led to a vacuum of blackness empty of the richness and joy of colour and differences. It is my understanding that as humans we draw back to history and what we have been told but this is not necessarily the true depiction of what was. This survey would give me an opportunity to understand how other artists think and express this. It will also afford me a valuable network of other artists and information to refer to whilst making work. Currently, I am working on a 90-day self-portrait challenge, whereby I take an unfiltered selfie every day and post it on Instagram. this exercise is now well past 30 days and I am not sure what I wanted to gain from this y...

Kikna is a word in Old Icelandic that meant to bend at the knees. The word passed through kinke (German) to kink (Dutch)* In the mid-20th century, “kink” took on a new meaning: “A sexually abnormal person; one who practices sexual perversions; loosely, an eccentric, a person wearing noticeably unusual clothes, behaving in a startling manner, etc.” The term “Kink” encompasses sexual and non-sexual practices that have been historically stigmatized by being considered “abnormal” or “unusual.” Kink is a way for people to embrace vulnerability, develop intimate bonds with others, and learn to communicate and negotiate varied sexual preferences in a non-judgmental way. Kikna embraces and speaks into this reality, using her body, while playing with the different roles in it.

  This is from a series of photos of me entitled The Boyfriend Auditions.  This iteration was purely photographic, but I have shown it as a performance piece too.

  Mothers go to extraordinary lengths for their children. For “Hidden Mother Photography” in Victorian times, shutter speeds were sometimes up to 30 seconds long so mothers would hide within the picture to hold their children still. Mothers revealed and concealed themselves, in order to create a “permanent document” of their children’s “identities”. This emotional labor is considered “invisible labor” because it is unpaid, undervalued, and often goes unnoticed in our culture. Instead of concealing their identity, I propose that the emotional labor these mothers perform actually REVEALS much about their identity–their ingenuity, inventiveness, commitment, and emotional labor and strength. My “moving portrait of emotional labor” pictures the process of photographic portraiture. I reenact their labor, along with enacting my own, as I pay tribute to the unpaid “hidden” labor of mothers that is performed universally, continually, unfailingly, throughout the world, thus monumentalizing i...

My work as an actress and director depends mainly on researching and archiving history by linking it to reality and lived memories, and using texts, images and music as a kinetic and narrative formation. In the latter's project in Tunisia, she relied on the use of the Lebanese film archives to narrate historical facts and link them to the girl who was looking for her uncle among the victims of the war, trying to link the stories and characters of the films in order to find the truth. The reality of the Lebanese civil war, and war sites. It is a different narrative of war.

  As a multi media artist my work relates to seeing and focusing on objects in space in a literal sense, as well as depicting (metaphorically) the complexity of information and the fluidity of our world, by multi-layering and repetitive calligraphic abstract mark making and mixed media. I hope to encourage the viewer to search for meanings and to appreciate the materials used in its creation. My work also includes sculptural installation and video pieces that deal with focus and blurring in a more fluid way. ‘The Wrong Glasses’ (56secs) is a short work that plays not only with the physical act of focusing, vision and being short-sighted, but also specifically with my self-image and identity and the idea of choosing and wearing glasses, fashion, self image and self delusion. In this video I have used a pair of ‘glasses’ that feature in some of my earlier installations and related sculptural pieces, as well as in other videos that relate to the notion of looking at objects in space. ...

  Invoking Aqueous Ancestors (2021-2023) is an online performance centering disability eco somatics. The work engages with movement, virtual backgrounds and light sources via ZOOM. The virtual backgrounds are of my ancestors Lenni-Lenape wetlands. I'm interested in tensions between technologies that weave together analogue and digital technologies with multiple bodies and ecologies of accessibility.

  I completed ... a  project last year to explore the use of photography within my practice. I have begun to take photographic self portraits bound by anxiety and discomfort, exploring home as a place of both security and uncertainty. Obscure bodies and objects situated in unexpected domestic scenarios are brought to life through these photographic works. Before this I have created sculptures and installations of figurative textile bodies (based on myself). Rather than create a copy or doll it has been interesting to explore this through a performative lens. I am very interested to take part in this conversation because before this I embarked on this project I would not have described myself as a performance artist.

  this submission is from my performance/video work 'The Scream' 2021. It was/is a 40-45 minute visceral video/live performance that explored my own metal ill health through words, video projection and live action. The photographic projections and live performance were designed/made/created to only work in an integrated form.

  I work in Live art / experimental film and theatre with visual arts. As such I'm often making my own PR images / editing together performance footage to make films which represent the feeling of the performance rather than the direct visual result. It would be fascinating to discuss this topic more and make more connections with people interested in this crossover point where the performance laps at the shore of the documentation.

 ' Other' is a project that explore the relationship of subject and a rejection of body-mind distinction in the tradition of Western philosophy. I was trying to “photograph” the interaction and the invisible intentionality between artist and participants via cyanotype.   The performance is an attempt to provide another pattern in the relationship of self and other and spiritual and material world. In the tradition of western philosophy, the binary separation of subject and object has dominated a long period of time, people think that matters in the external world are merely analogy or imagination of our mind, which would eventually lead to a kind of apathy between us. By mirroring the actions of the audience, I’m trying to provide a scenario where people can recognize another human existence authentically, and suggest a that there are real existence, people out there.

  I am really interested to take part in this project as I am actively exploring self portrayal through photography in response to situating a work of art in the created and staged image and alluding to or suggesting its potential use/activation/position/function through its relationship to the body - these moments are somewhat surreal, posed positions that attempt to reference or create a dialogue between the body, the objets and the space. This interest in the 'use of the body’ as a plinth, as part of the sculptural language of the image and object - as much of a moulded, malleable, plastic matter as the clay that the objects I make can be. I am exploring context and display, and how the object relates to its own materiality, as well as that of its situation - this has been of interest to me for a while, deconstructing the concept of adornment, placement and subversion of material and function with the form of the objets and what this may signify and communicate. The activation a...

As a graphic designer I'm most interested in the real thoughts of photographers that can be conveyed through self-portraits, rather than just a pretty picture. That's why I try to support such initiatives and events. Exploring touchdesigner tools, I made one of my "selfies" there... And then I catch a thought that a machine sees and understands me better than I did that time. It made me feel strange to realize, and yet it broadens the limits of possible.

  I am a performance artist that works with live performance (sometimes durational) performance to video and performance activism. My body is always my tool to convey and explore identity and self-expression and the questions that raises of the body as an object and voyeurism. My practice is centred around gender politics and the patriarchal hierarchy that thrives on the assumed gender binary of men and women. I strive to make work that raises questions about gender oppression? and inequalities by using performance and activism that are often entangled, visceral and unsettling. My thoughts and concepts are fundamentally concerned with identity, sexuality and mimicry and the multiple roles women play. I have a strong focus on domesticity and the global pressure for female perfection, as seen through the patriarchal gaze. I am interested in the notion of women partaking both consciously and subconsciously in gender stereotyping that in turn impacts what they feel they should be and d...

  As a photographer I feel most connected to the listed topics of 'Use of the body' and 'Self-representation.' My self portraiture work concerns the documentation of my physical body as a means of self exploration. Creating and sharing images of my body provokes a feeling of vulnerability within me, yet a simultaneous feeling of liberation and strength, as if self portraiture allows me to reclaim my physical body detached from all notions of sexualisation as a female growing up in our current society. I'm not concerned with looking attractive, feminine, young, it's rather the opposite. It's a space where my body feels pure and exists as an art form, allowing me to free myself from my own personal insecurities, a space where honest self expression is accepted. My work allows me to use my body as a platform for creation, movement and exploration of the self and my own personal relationships. I often photograph myself on the roughest of days, as a way to escap...

  My practice focuses on feminism and the self image but my photography involves self portraiture and how the middle aged woman is perceived. My interest in this subject was reflected in my dissertation entitled " Has the role of Female Self Portrayal art become obsolete in modern society?"

  After a long time being camera shy, a voyeur of others… I landed in an isolated place. Tentatively, I began to turn the lens on myself. As I age, I question my evolving intent, daring myself as I skip the lines of beauty and grotesque. I would love to be part of an exploration into the whys and curiosities of self portraiture.