Crisis of Self-Image

The series “Crisis of Self-Image” emerged from a personal experience of destabilization of my own identity. Unlike earlier works, in which fragments of faces or closed eyes appeared, this cycle presents entire figures — often lost, as if uncertain of their own image.

For centuries people attempted to read a person’s character from their face. Disciplines such as physiognomy or criminal anthropology attributed moral qualities to facial features: goodness, wickedness, or a tendency toward violence. Although today these theories are recognized as pseudoscientific constructions, the mechanism of such thinking still persists in the human imagination. We continue to instinctively attempt to “read” the faces of others.

In moments of crisis this gaze may turn back toward oneself. One’s own face ceases to be obvious and stable. It becomes an uncertain image — open to interpretation, projection, and the gaze of others.

The figures depicted in this series exist precisely within this space of uncertainty. What remains hidden here is not the gaze, but identity itself. The image of a person ceases to function as a stable sign of identity and instead becomes a field of tension between who we are and how we appear to others.