I did this self-portrait as a way of exploring the language of paint, as a traditional form of representation. This is emphasised by the (female) nudity yet broken by the fact that the object is also the author. I painted myself looking in the mirror and holding the brush, which I changed into a surgical blade. The vertical line of thick red paint emphasises the artifice (of painting as a means of representation) symbolically functioning as a cut yet failing to do so realistically (literal visual resemblance).
I am interested in self-portraiture as a gesture, as an action that reflects upon the role of the creator, and in the case of nudity underlines the presence of the body. The agent depicting their own body faces us with the fact that the body is not the passive object of representation, not a mere materiality, for at the top of this (passive, female, erotic-aestheticised) flesh is the head looking at us, the self, the creator. Selfhood is thus forced into the body, and thus the body is perceived as person, we identify with it rather than gaze at it as an object.
The tool is held by a hand that cuts itself, and a hand that paints itself. The reflective gesture attempts to break the concept of the body as object, refering to two frameworks in which the gaze turns us into meat: representation and surgery.
