Untenable Portraits is the result of a thorough search for identity within portraiture. It strips away all those elements that reveal one's socio-cultural and historical context, utilizing the conventional portrait as a field of investigation.
What lies beyond my image? What lies beyond being a woman? Can we see more than the depicted image? Does it shape my identity?
Starting from the portrait as a possible container of all the aforementioned answers, the artwork applies a surgical process: it cuts, shaves, hammers, and breaks the photograph, delving into what the images conceal.
The three-part journey proposed by the artwork emphasizes the identity perceived by others, the self-perceived identity, and the ideal and utopian identity. An erasing image: the body is the first thing seen by others, erasing the lived experiences and internal journey, violating identity. An inquiring image: a process of self-perception, the search for identity beyond physical expression. A resulting image: a utopian encounter with identity, a shapeless, mutating, and flexible mass, a blank sheet as an infinity of possible identities.
This triptych took part in the Bahía Blanca 2021 Photography and Moving Image Festival (FFIMBB), was selected in the competition for the 2020/21 Ayerza Award by the National Academy of Fine Arts (ANBA), and participated as a selected project in the online artistic residency Project Duna (2021).
"Una imagen que borra" - (An erasing image)
"Una imagen que indaga" - (An inquiring image)
"Una imagen que idealiza" - (An ideal image)
