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Arts & Communication Self-portraits as masks

In the same period, Cahun engaged in a multidisciplinary feminist examination of contemporary culture, she outlines
artistic practice encompassing writing, sculpture, – in reference to Sherman – that “just as her body remains
photomontage, photography, and performance. By unseen as “in itself it really is,” so too does the sign fail to
changing her given name to the gender-neutral pseudonym reproduce the referent. Performance uses the performer’s
Claude and adopting her grandmother’s surname, Cahun body to pose a question about the inability to secure the
forged a new artistic identity diverging from both relation between subjectivity and the body per se.” 23
traditionally perceived femininity and masculinity. She If Sherman’s concern is to make the female body visible,
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wrote the following: “Masculine? Feminine? It depends Wearing shifts the focus to the exploration of relational
on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always and social ties and how they influence the construction
suits me.” Through employing various props such as of subjective identity. The works of both artists reflect
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masks, costumes, and elements from nature, she disrupted the difficulty of representing oneself as one really is. In
conventional perceptions of reality, creating self-portraits Sherman’s case, as for Wearing, what is represented is a
that focus on the exploration of the fluidity of the self. self-image that is “always already an image of the other”
Simultaneously, her photographic portraits underscore because it reflects something that does not belong to the
the challenges of positioning herself as an artist generally original self and that remains covered up under makeup,
perceived by her peers as a female within a cultural and wigs, and prostheses. The visible body thus ends up
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intellectual sphere dominated by male presence. 21 concealing rather than revealing the real self. 25
Wearing draws upon the artistic practices of both This component ties into what Wearing’s voiceover
Duchamp/Rrose Sélavy and Cahun, choosing photography expresses in the video installation Wearing, Gillian (2018):
as the preferred medium and the self-portrait as the “We all wear masks. We’re all actors. When you walk
predominant form. Although, as outlined below, her out your front door in the morning, you’re putting on a
photographs differ from those of her predecessors, Wearing performance for the world.” 26
pays tribute to them through a series entitled Spiritual
Family (2008 – present), in which she disguises herself as In this respect, Fredric Jameson’s study of the cultural,
the artists who have most influenced her during her career political, and social implications of postmodernism
by wearing silicone masks and adopting their gestures. offers an interesting key to interpretation. It describes
In doing so, she acknowledges not only Duchamp and the transition from the centered subjectivity of
Cahun but also Meret Oppenheim, Robert Mapplethorpe, classical capitalism to the fragmented subjectivity
Georgia O’Keeffe, Diane Arbus, and several other artists as of postmodernism through pictures using examples
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her chosen spiritual family. from art history. Jameson identifies Edvard Munch’s
The Scream (1893) as emblematic of the modern era’s
In this context, as well as in other photographs, the anxiety, highlighting its depiction of “the great modernist
masks have an alienating effect on the viewer because, thematics of alienation, anomie, solitude, social
despite their verisimilitude, it is obvious that they are fragmentation, and isolation” as a sign of the expression
prostheses. The large format of the photographic prints of individual subjectivity. Regarding the postmodern
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reveals some unmistakable details of their fabrication. In subject, Jameson asserts that it lacks the capacity to
particular, the distance between the mask and Wearing’s organize time into a coherent experience; the inability
eye contour makes it clear that this is fiction, not a portrait to create continuity between past and future results in a
of a real person. In the photographic self-portraits schizophrenic subject who exists in a perpetual present,
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of Duchamp/Rrose Sélavy and Cahun, the subjects’ experiencing fragmentation, plurality, and emotional
identities remain identifiable and cohesive, despite flatness. Consequently, a painting such as The Scream,
changes in makeup, clothing, and prosthetics. By contrast, which conveys intense emotions like anxiety and
in Wearing’s self-portraits, the prostheses and makeup alienation, can no longer be created in postmodernity,
suggest that the represented identity is fictitious. These as the concept of expression presupposes a unified and
details lead the viewer to question who the real subject of unique self, a coherent temporal experience, and a clear
the portrait is while underlining the theme of the whole demarcation between internal and external realities.
operation, namely the ambiguity in the perception of the Jameson cites Andy Warhol’s work as indicative of early
self and the other.
postmodern artistic production reflecting the advent of a
In this respect, Peggy Phelan’s analysis of performance new form of flatness, the collapse of the distinction between
and the representation of the body in contemporary times is high and low culture, and the waning of effect. In Warhol’s
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fascinating, especially when she focuses on Cindy Sherman’s portraits, the subjects are replicated, commodified, and
self-portraits. Addressing the politics of visibility through a reduced to mere images, thereby erasing references to their

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Volume 3 Issue 2 (2025) olume 3 Issue 2 (2025) 4 4 doi: 10.36922/ac.338510.36922/ac.3385