Here is why I make art:
My work explores the implications of social identity as performance, an idea that can be traced all the way back to Aristotle’s theory of the soul as the very act of being alive. Rather than containing separate and steadfast roles to be filled permanently, today’s social structure calls for a flexible participant who conforms to complex situations, essentially performing different characters as informed by the context. I am particularly interested in American psychologist Dr. Kenneth Gergen’s conclusions concerning identity formation strategies, in which he suggests a staged progression through specific roles: the strategic manipulator, who views identity as a series of role-playing exercises and eventually becomes alienated from these characters; the pastiche personality, which abandons a central identity and instead transforms entirely for every situation; and the relational self, for whom there is no sense of an individual identity at all and who only views themselves in terms of their relations to others. The concept of developing, organizing, and maintaining these various alter egos forms the modern social conflict: keeping the balance between adaptation and dissociation. While the personas we create help us cope with the shifting social framework of daily life, they also lead us to compartmentalize our sense of self to such extent that eventually the combined pieces cease to make the whole—we can essentially become lost in our own cast of characters.