_project: under this mask

(2025 - ongoing)

We wear masks all the time. Polite ones. Useful ones. Gendered ones. Cultural ones. We perform the versions of ourselves that are liked, desired, and accepted. Those performances aren’t always chosen; they’re inherited, internalised, and often unexamined.

But masks aren’t inherently bad; they’re a natural part of being alive. In many cultures, masks aren’t used to hide, but to reveal; to allow something else to speak through the wearer. The artist Claude Cahun wrote, “Under this mask, another mask.”

This self-portrait series begins with that contradiction.

What if we chose different performances? What if we let the unrehearsed, the imperfect, the too-loud and too-uncertain parts of ourselves take the stage?

Using face paint I stage interventions on my own face, not to hide, but to reimagine how identity can be seen, or not seen at all. By erasing recognition, I create space for other ways of existing, ones that resist legibility, gendered expectations, or aesthetic conventions.