Familiar Strangers

I am a bridge between East and West.
I am a flower grown in the desert.
I am the storm in the winter screaming silently.
I am human. Human is me.

Film Director, Collage Maker, Multi-Talented Artist. In Fan’s funky, colourful, and over the top imaginary world, there are numerous details of traditional far east philosophies and contemporary western points of view, mixing with music, Science Fiction, poems, industrial engineering, dancing, mathematics, natural sciences, mangas, street art, and many other seemingly unrelated cultures. One way or another, somehow she’s mixed all her ‘weird’ personal experiences into her art creations

Adeniyi Adetayo

Ilorin, Kwara, Nigeria

Esther, after my mom’s

Ink and acrylics on canvas/ 80cm X 100cm

As a kid, well still even now I’m grown up, I used to feel my purpose in life with repairing damaged things and because of that I wanted to be an engineer but now I know it’s more than just things, people too.
I connect on a cellular basis with everything and everyone I come in contact with, understanding them from their own and other perspectives, so my works are about the day to day people I come in contact with, my community, the society as I want to see it be.
I am Adeniyi Adetayo with the alias Artistadeyjosh, born 1997 in the city of Lagos, Nigeria. I started painting as it is the only way I can actually say what I mean to say, I don’t socialize much but the art, music and science got me covered.

Hadi Khani

Iran, Zanjan city

My Collection In Me

40*50 cm

Silence is the most inspiring mode for me in painting. Loneliness is full of silence and ambiguity for me and this silence and ambiguity is reflected in my work,
And at different times and on different days, I paint my portrait and depict all my inner states in color and form,
And I embody my inner states in the reality of body painting.

María Pedrique

Santiago, Chile

potential.

Digital Collage. 1620 x 2160 px

I am what people need me to be in a world that constantly reminds me what I am not.
I am a migrant from no where.
I am woman to be used for the most urgent needs.
How am I?
You don’t really care.
Who am I?
Again, you don’t really care.

Jess Parry

South Wales, United Kingdom

Looking out My Bedroom Window

Who am I?
I believe that everyone reveals different sides of themselves around different people. We all just act and are the truest actors and actresses to ourselves. It’s a question of philosophical perception really – ‘Who do you think you are?’ or ‘Who am I?’
Some people get to see the more comical side of yourself whilst others know the true raw and vulnerable side.
In everyone’s eyes, I believe that people see everyone differently that is why this portrait that I have submitted reveals the side of myself that people not so much expect of me or to see me in this state.

Fawn Savantrad

Bangkok, Thailand

Floating Head Floats

Digital

Honestly, I’m not sure who I am most of the time. I would stare at the mirror and don’t even recognize the face staring back. Maybe I’ve familiarized myself with dissociation so much that I’m okay with it. I am in no control of this brain or body at all; I’m just an observer from far away. The only thing I could do is wave at her from time to time.

Allison Hilgert

St. Petersburg, FL, USA

High Hopes

Oil on canvas

Florida native Allison Hilgert, was born a nature lover and specializes in painting. Focused on isolating space to capture candid forms with sensual, whimsical and sometimes somber undertones. Motivated by how powerful an impact our thoughts and feelings can have on manipulating our human form, and manifesting these powers into both magical and terrifying dream like elements.

Sydney Herndon

Bowling Green, Kentucky, USA

Scurry, The Offering, Get Clean

Oil on Canvas, 24″ x 30″, Oil on Canvas, 24″ x 30″, Oil on Canvas, 48″ x 60″

Using symbols and bright colors in contrast with traditional portraiture, my work explores the various mental states of women in today’s society. The portraits rely on the imposition of specific symbols and the unease of heightened color to convey what the subject is actually feeling. Because my art practice is a direct response to my own internalized feelings, I explore the pressures that women face in their day-to-day lives to hide their negative emotions behind some kind of an exterior.

Yin Lu

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

ROOTS

Acrylic on Canvases

I consider myself as an artwork made of Chinese and Australian elements. A cross and mix between distant territories with different hues. An anomaly to culture and a work of freedom. My Chinese and Australian roots gave me the liberty to express myself. Growing up with freedom allowed me to be curious. I yearn for the other half of my identity. My skin colour has a shade of yellow and it is a constant reminder of what else I am made of. I hunger for the yin to my yang. I step back in time and I am opened to a soulful discovery. My art represents my peculiarity. The opposing nature of my mixed races are shown by the contrasting pieces and colours using ink and acrylic. My passion to rekindle my Chinese heritage inspires my work. While the liberty to express by painting nude bodies is in respect to my unbound Australian upbringing. My story is reflected in my art. My work, as well as myself, combines tradition and freedom.

Angela Masker

Phoenix, Arizona

Self Portrait (Red Sun)

12″ x 12″

My notion of who I think I am has evolved and become clearer over the past year and a half. In isolation, I have been forced to focus on myself more than ever before. My artistic process has given me the ability to analyze what lies beneath the surface, scrutinizing subject matter in grueling detail. Recently, my work has been almost exclusively self portraits, and centers around self, memory, and personal experience. I utilize stream of consciousness drawing to work introspectively and confront hidden thoughts and emotions. Each piece acts as a documentation or an entry in a non-verbal diary of sorts. Like pages in a diary, the works are small and intimate; one must get up close and personal to view them.

Paul Ogunlesi

Lagos, Nigeria.

WHO I AM TOMORROW

graphite and Watercolour on cartridge/ 43x30cm

I am a shining light, the one whose greatness can never be diminished, I am a soul yearning for Succour, I am he that wears royalty as mere cloth without even noticing. This is me tomorrow (tomorrow never ends).

Christian Bañez

New York, NY, USA

I’m on Fire (I), I’m on Fire (II)

48 inches x 36 inches

I’m an multimedia artist born in the Philippines, raised in rural Missouri, and now relocated to NYC. I create art telling stories of introspection from life as a gay, first generation immigrant. I’m on Fire came from an incident when I was 4 about falling into a fire. I mythologized that moment in my past into a series of paintings depicting parts of myself burning, and how that fire has manifested in me as my drive, ambition, and also burnout.

Grim Hunny

Abuja, Nigeria

Face Reveal, Drip Drop

Digital Art – 1080x1080p

I think I am someone trying to figure out the messy and wonderous middle between being alive and fearing death

Kirsten Hammond

Denmark

The Trojan horse – the other you

50 x 70 cm mixed media on paper

It says when a person is a trojan horse it is difficult to see the true purpose or intentions behind the person. Some years ago a trojan virus appears from a trusted source attached to an email. The trojan viruses takes over ones personal computer and the victim was often too late unaware of the fatal problems. In social media often you’re able to take a false identity and in many ways it reminds me of the old story about the Trojan horse from the old Greek Period. Sometimes it is just difficult to see whether it is a genuine person or not in these times. And somehow it is accepted in the social media to be an another you: The Trojan horse -the other you-.

Jordan Ramsey Ismaiel

Iowa City, IA, USA

Wasteland Love

Acrylic and Oil on Canvas, 54in x 60in

Often the work that I make is an image of who I want to be; who I think I could be in the future. I paint these utopian environments where there’s the potential for various things to happen that relate to love, protection, emotional safety, and comfort. Through my work, I am constantly projecting this version of myself that has the capabilities of providing all these things to myself because they, in reality, do not quite exist in my personal life. The individual I think I am in my paintings is someone able to do and give everything that is important for themselves.

Dorian Sabo

Sydney, Australia

Bogey, Self-Portrait as the Artist, Self-Portrait in the Box

Oil on canvas 22x25cm, Oil on canvas 42x36cm, Oil on panel 26x24cm

I really don’t know. Maybe a minor artist taking delight in his own ugliness. Maybe a fantasized embodiment of the Portrait of Dorian Gray. Most probably a 21st century anxious white man acknowledging all his failings as a human being

Lucia Giri

Pune, India

End of the World, Baptism

I believed I found my way, my passion, my legacy few years ago but then I stepped to India, country full of colors, fragrances, glitters, contrasts and I got shaken. My life got upside down and I started to search for myself unintentionally. And when after few years of my life in India I got again satisfying feeling of knowing myself and my life mission, I stumbled again. I got a baby and I lost the identity most brutally I could. Suddenly I did not know who I am, what I want and with each and every birth I gave, the feeling became stronger and louder. Now, 3rd baby and I feel the urge to search again as if spiritual connection with the soul of my unborn child awakened my thirst for the knowledge that pushes me to explore my mind and soul so I can finally feel complete and satisfied. But will my answers be the final ones? I am here to learn, open my eyes wide and help others on their journey.

Nasrin Amiri Ramsheh

Bern, Switzerland

self portraits

mixed media on paper_ 10x15cm

I was born and grown up in Iran. As an Iranian, I can’t avoid my background and my roots. independent personality and individual freedom are not to be found there. I always felt that I am under the supervision of power and felt controlled, and I saw myself being watched every second of every day.

Hava Zilbetchtein

Tel-Aviv, Israel

untitled

Etching

I am a woman who makes good for all around. I make art that gives me strength to do good. I am a printmaker artist, who does etching. This work is a photoetching self-portrait

Nadia Heart

Kyiv, Ukraine

Incognito 2

76×56 cm, ink on paper

The image of a girl hiding her face becomes a symbol of discovering a new personality. She builds a new “I”, which step by step creates a new portrait of a modern girl – bold, self-sufficient, open. Selfie in the mirror is a documentation of reincarnation and a reference for further changes. The search for a new progressive interpretation of the “new” turns to thoughts about the male world. Does it make sense to divide the world by gender? Does it make sense to give things a gender difference? Is a men’s suit really men’s, or is it just a suit?

Anum Masood

Pakistan

Untitled

Charcoal on Paper, 27.5 x 39.5 inches

My art is about self-exploration living unconscionably in the chaotic state of mind that it has become a reflection of my personality, I have used a minimalist technique to provide a visual expression of my personality and my thought processes and hidden feelings that I cannot express through words, because whenever I have to explain myself or my thoughts, words just jumble upon in my head. Therefore, I decided to speak my thoughts through my art. My recent work is based upon a chaotic state of mind that’s defined my chaos whenever it’s come to describing myself, my thoughts, my ideas related to life and every other thing happing in my mind.

Rebekka Katajisto

Reflecting

18 x 17 cm

Born in one country, raised in another, my identity is not tied strongly to any one location. I am shy, I am quiet, I am nervous, always have been. I always try to be kind. At 23, I am slowly starting to be kind to myself too and discover who it is that I really am. I’ve spent all these years so far moulding myself into what I think other people want me to be, in order for them to like me. Recently, I have been drawing a lot of self-portraits. Reflecting on my own likeness. It helps me see and appreciate the beauty in myself.

Luise Eru

Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Já comprei o pão

31 W x 39 H x 1 D in

I’m a scared boy, who doesn’t know where to go but what he wants to do. I just know that’s what I want to do, art, even art, not just a modern-day coin. As a unique way to express feelings.

Badabeam Badaboom

Kwanoxolo Township, Gqebera. Eastern Cape

Memories are … forever.

I think I’m possessed. By something mysterious and sacred as the symmetries, the explosive synergy between pen paper and potentiality. The rhizome is horizon, the wilderness, creativity and, the cosmos. Even though I’m an Artist I keep the monster. The creator does not play, the myth is, this time like a gun possessed unlocking passion rising, realising my mindframe looking at the point of written arrows attacking inspiration. Making something of, creating with, rendering oneself into, an investigation of , existing as a conceptual entity subjectively active sequencing. I risk summoning metamorphosis. I risk transforming to being the very psychic generic carbon material in question. To be a true artist is to be an intuitive lover of creativity and the intuitive path of the renaissance. Sacred a pretender I treat the world very much like craft fetishism. I’m a conceptual alternative artist. Learning about energy I would describe it essentially as perception, mediums, lenses. Playing with hard realms, playing with brinks my mind swaying in the imaginary and the real. I’m am interested in perpetual senses , performance. Play is perversions. Play is Performance…

Mary Mazziotti

USA

Psychic Self-Portrait

hand-embroidery on textile/ 57″H x 48″W

An artist who found her way very late.

Dagmar Margaret

Stockholm, Sweden

Emotional Rollercoaster

Film Photography (Portra 400), 1000×1000

My concept of self is constantly changing and with time I am more comfortable with the ambiguous and fluid nature of who I think I am. The truth is somedays I feel like I know exactly who I am and other days I barely recognize my own reflection. Self-portraits play a huge role in helping me work out who I think I am in this moment in time. It reminds me of how we all wear many masks and play different roles in life, such as the wife, the daughter, the friend, the roommate, the classmate, etc. Seeing myself in different photographs help me feel seen and express just how many versions of me there really are.

Emily Mc Gardle

Monaghan, Ireland

Keep on Smilin’

Coloured pencil, pencil and pen on paper, 40 x 40cm

I drew this self-portrait last year during a particular period of uncertainty- about myself and the world in general. At the time I really wasn’t in the mood for smiling. In my mind, this is how I imagined myself looking whenever I did smile.

Ashley Cullen

Canberra, Australia

Tritons, After Rupert Bunny

99.4mm x 122 x 3.5 cm

Identity is like water; slippery and unpredictable. We mythologise and idealise the person we want to be and plunge into crisis when it is misinterpreted. This discomfort of being ‘misread’ often manifests from an acute awareness of the unknowable depths of our own capacity for change. Whose perception can we trust? There is a comfort in self-portraiture that allows one to embed their likeness in a solid, unchanging composition; one that invites others to interpret the subject; so long as it remains within the internal structure of the painting itself. While it is often believed that artists are the singular, uncontested authorities on the subjects of their portraits, especially self-portraits, ‘Tritons’ explores the difficult relationship that I have with ideas of ‘self’, presenting various fragmentations of the central figure. Some are in conversation with one another, while others desperately try to disassociate from each other. A ‘past’ self swims toward the embodied ‘present’; a small child combs her hair, blissfully unaware of the scene unfolding around her; each a variation of a person that exists in the memory of others.

Hannah Peacock

Livermore, California

Priornus Californicus

14”x20” watercolor

As much as I try to create myself, there is only so far one can go before nature takes over. You cannot become someone you were never meant to be. You can better yourself, but you cannot change who you truly are. I tell myself I am an artist, a dreamer, a lover of nature, a bookworm. These are not characteristics, these are interests. If I tell myself I am kind and gentle, which is how others describe me, then I feel as if I am describing myself as better than I am. If I say I am adventurous and fun, even if it’s true, I feel like I’m lying. I am merely a grub, in life and artistically, waiting for the day I am perfected into a moth, and wondering if that day will come at all.

Noushin Delfany

Iran

Emergency exit 4

Acrylic on canvas, about 35. 85 cm

When I am asleep another me comes to me. We communicate, discuss or just make fun and play. It is mostly not easy to understand what she means. She is a stranger, a lovely stranger. So I like to amuse myself by dreaming or painting what we share.

Vivien Solveig

Germany

Froschkönig (tale of the frogprince)

ballpen on paper

I am an artist. Meaning I am drawing/painting ever since being a small child.
The artwork referce to the Grimms fairytale the Frogking.
The photograph used as a referece for the woman surrounded by frogs is me, although I changed a few things about facial features, (for example my eyes- they are not that big).

Melanie Barnett

Brandon, Manitoba, Canada

Botanist

18″ x 24″

“Botanist” is a work from my BFA Honours thesis exhibition, “Detritus”, which comments on humanity’s relationship to the planet amidst the climate crisis. In these works, my own anxieties surrounding a collapsing environment are laid bare, and I ask myself if an untimely death to humanity is what it means to be human.

Izhar Yusrin

Malaysia

Portrait of Me and My Other Selves

29.7cm X 42.0cm

I see social media as an intriguing space. It can bring either the fakest or the realest version of oneself. One can share all the sunshine and rainbows to impress other strangers even though their real life is not that colourful. One can also unveil their devilish true self because the anonymity of social media can avoid him from any consequences, something that they are incapable of in real life. While the fakest personas creating the life they want to live in and the realest personas escaping the slavery life they were trapped in, the connotation of “real life” to the world which we currently breath in became irrelevant. It opened my eyes to the question; am I even living my true self if I was filtered based on my religion, culture, space I was in and people I am surrounded with?

Shari Phoenix

Barbados

I’m not your Nigger, I’m still not your Nigger, positively sure I’m still not your Nigger

Watercolour on paper/ 11×13

“Not your Nigger” series Arguably, the Black caricature has made an enormous impact on numerous aspect of our daily lives, from childhood to adulthood and from cartoons to a pancake syrup logo. The Black caricature has been used as a visual representation to racial ridicule the Black identity as a collective. The caricature by nature imitates a person’s physical appearance through comical and grotesque means. It is an art from meant for laughs at others expense. This series “Not your nigger” is meant to be a reclamation of the physical attributes used to mock the Black identity. Within these self portraits, the character embraces the over exaggerations of the characteristics of the Black caricature and blatantly says ‘I’m not your nigger.” In reclaiming these features, it attempts to dismantle the position of power held over the Black individual by these racist representations.

Matina Vossou

Athens, Greece

JUDITH & THE EQUATION OF TIME (2021)

Acrylic on canvas board, 30 cm X 40 cm

I am all the people that I loved. I am the eternity of my ephemeral moments and my living memories. I am the rhythm of silence when the music has stopped.

Olivia Mansfield

United Kingdom

Dances With Self

Acrylic on board 15 x 23cm

This painting is a vision of my pregnant self engaged in an intense dance ritual with what I see as an aspect of my younger self.
When I began this work I had no idea what was going to manifest, but these figures are absolutely moving through an interchange, a transitional stage of my life which I found at the time really helpful and beautiful to focus in on.
My painting process is very intuitive, figures and bodies, places, dwellings and realms exist waiting to emerge from with the gestural pushes and pull of the medium.
I find that these beings move through the elements, through darkness and light with a dreamlike presence.
This piece in particular gives me a feeling of calm and serenity. It illustrates a synchronicity with ‘your/the inner self’ in somewhat turbulent and unknown times.

Victoria

Ile Ife, Nigeria

Victoria, Abishola

Oniosun Victoria Erioluwa was born in Oyo, Oyo state. A multimedia artist, Victoria works in oil, pastel, pencil, sand, Acrylic and charcoal. She is currently a final year student at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife. She completed her students industrial training at Opedun Arts Studios, where she was mentored by Damilola Opedun himself. My paintings have been influenced by many occurrences, experiences that all pile up to tell a story. I am always geared up to experiment with different mediums. Through my journey of painting my major choice of story has been about womanhood, girl child, in short I pay more relevance to the female gender the issues affecting them and mostly use this to pass different messages. My contribution to the outside world has been highly relevant, my paintings are therapeutic as they come with messages like hope, strength, beauty, social justice, peace and Yoruba culture included. The influence of Yoruba culture is evident in my works from their motifs, beliefs, dressing e.t.c. The purpose is to create art to beautify, to heal, to preach love, hope e.t.c

Ellaya Yefymova

Kiev, Ukraine

Let the light in

Mixed media (oil & acrylics)/ 80*60 cm

I was a victim of violence. In all its forms. But I only became strong after admitting my weakness. Until I admitted to myself that I was a victim, did not hug myself, did not throw off the feeling of guilt and the fact that I was somehow wrong, bad, broken, I could not let the light in and heal; move forward and build my life the way I want, and most importantly – the way I deserve. I stopped rejecting a person who was ready to share his light with me and who saw the light in me, despite all the defences from the past. He illuminated my path to finding my true self, lying through the thorny forest of past events, emotions and experiences. The past is just the past. You can push on and let go of it. But there is no butterfly without a cocoon. Having built a cocoon out of self-pity, you can’t escape it. And if someone offers help transforming pity into self-love, accept that help! Let yourself be a butterfly and fly!

XAiLA

United Kingdom

Isolation

Digital Image

I think I am what other people say I am. I am a character creator, creative director and artist. As a non-binary person I have always been fascinated by identity and gender. I create a space with my work for people to explore these themes. It was hard to know who I really was as the characters often consumed me and I didn’t know who the purveyor of these people were. Sometimes I don’t know if I am all of them or they are all of me. I have tried relentlessly to define my identity as one thing but I don’t believe I can as it is so fluid between species, masculine and feminine and historic narratives. On a daily basis new narratives flow through me of stories of identities that I feel need to be told urgently. Fluidity, acceptance and exploration is critical for me.

Dimitra Tsoutsia

Athens, Greece

Feeling oneself, Untitled

mixed media (acrylics, pencil and sticking plaster on paper), 35 * 25 cm

Dimitra Tsoutsia is a Greek artist born in Athens. Her first degree was in Medicine (University of Athens) in 2020, specializing in Psychiatry. In 2021, began studying BA in Fine Arts (AKTO College, Athens). This series of autoportraits tries to examine the vulnerability of human condition. Specifically, the artworks aim to get across the fluidity of one’s sense of self. For that reason, the themes depicted are directed in a way which evokes a sense of belonging and not belonging at the same time. Through that contradiction, someone forms the unique way they experience themselves and the surrounding space. This process takes place in the paintings in various ways; either as the act of self-observation, self-portraying, depicting scenes with a paradoxical and idiosyncratic look, or by emphasizing the feeling of absence and loss. In most of the paintings arise a sense of ambivalence. Colorful and vivid forms organize an aggregate of deficit figures. In general terms, the artworks are about an effort of tracing oneself.

Alyona Grishko

Moscow, Russia

Flashes of memory

Oil, mixed media on wood panel

I’m substance of my dreams and my memories..
A human has no apparatus responsible for objective perception of reality. Truth lies within short emotional states. Yet, they are impossible to maintain. One cannot learn the truth in an instant, and just possess it. Only after a while, having come a long way, we are able to re-edify, reunite and return all that was gone, i.e. return ourselves to us. We bring the lost time back. That is why I depict these reflexive experiences.

Olivia Vivanco

Mexico City, Mexico

Inside 1 , Inside 2

Collage / Variable dimensions

I live inside of me
I look at myself
I am what I hide
What I think and what I deny
I am forgetfulness, I am absences
I am what you don’t think of me

Sky Dai

Nomadic around US (currently in Black Mountain, NC)

Quarantine Day Dream (of Escaping to a Farm), Birthday of Alternative Personalities, Stream of Consciousness

Oil paint on Panel, 4 x 4 ft, Oil paint on Panel, 4 x 5 feet, Oil Paint on Panel, 35.5 x 48 inches

A method actor armed with a typewriter, a mini van trembling with an unforeseen anxiety, and a mind frozen in the past like a telepathic television screen — Sky Dai is a surreal figurative oil painter, award winning poet and creative non-fiction essayist, and improvisational dancer. They identify as a queer, disabled, rainbow person, and a part of a dissociative system with a service-dog side kick, Cloud Monet. Sky Dai and Monet have taught meditative movement classes at School of the Alternative, been an artist-in-residence at Bunker Projects, and received a BFA in fine arts and creative writing at Columbus College of Art and Design. When Sky Dai and Monet aren’t painting, gardening, reading tarot, volunteering with Food Not Bombs, turning a 1995 Chevy Van into an art mobile, or hiking through the woods looking for a secret swimming hole… they’re probably watching Scooby-Doo reruns and trying to solve some mysteries.

Martim Dinis

Lisbon, Portugal

Self-portrait

Acrylic on paper, 32×41 cm

A being constantly learning, getting rid of cultural and religion prisons and stereotypes. Lucky to be able to use paint (its mysteries and colours) to express myself and cope with the world.
This work is about coming to terms with fear, of not being good enough to me and the others. Looking back, I guess I found some peace and confidence.

Colette Williams

London, UK

Portrait of the artist as a shepherd girl

66x56cm Acrylic on linen

In 2019, in a small, damp, windowless studio in London I was studying a print of Bartolome Esteban Murillo’s shepherd boy. I was a year out of art college, wrestling with who I was, what kind of artist I was and who I wanted to be. I was mostly working in hospitality jobs, and felt disconnected from nature, my main source of inspiration. Suddenly I found my face in the shepherd boy and transitioned my transcription to become Portrait of the artist as a shepherd girl. I am sitting, alone, in a windy valley, nature pulling up its colours up around me. I am close to nature, trusted by nature, it is telling something. I am gazing assuredly into the future. I hold a paint brush, because I’m a painter. I know who I am in this wilderness. I keep this painting hanging in my studio to remind myself, I know my priorities, I know myself and I know what I can do. Self portraits reflect what you are on the inside and I can escape into the portrait.

Angel Cotray

Bronx, NY, USA

Amor Vincit Omnia Praeter Me

11 x 14 in.

A lot of my work is self reflective; I use my body as a reference often and the paintings are always about what I’m currently enduring mentally. At the moment, I see myself as a passionate woman, driven by the idea of perfection. That perfectionist living inside me can be harmful to my day to day thought process. Amor Omnia Vincit Praeter Me is about the dark side of a person— me. The anxious perfectionist, the narcissist, the manipulator, the shadow that can’t be ignored. Additionally, the painting is about fear that feeds off of my mind when alone. However fearful I have been, I choose to confront my fears daily. This work reflects that confrontation in a way that is mindful and expressive, exposing my shadows to light.

Awolaja Toluwalase

Nigeria

THE HUNT

2 x 3 ft

My art piece is a reflection of law enforcers who were instilled the power to defend and protect its citizens but would rather enjoy senseless harassment and killings of its citizens. A display of abuse of power and injustice by the police.
Talking about myself now. Apart from the fact that I enjoy making art, I love visiting new places and experiencing the taste of different foods. I also enjoy having fun at the beach . I have very few friends and shy to talk to new people. Sometimes I get depressed about my art because I feel I could be better.

Chloe Swopshire

Maui, Hawaii

Self Portrait

27.5 x 20.5 inches

I think I am moving energy, God as consciousness, intentionally radiating love now that I am self aware. I am only temporary, as all things in form, but the love and feelings that I experience everyday are eternal. Since I have gotten the chance to regularly live life barefoot, sole to terra – I feel alive. I think I believe in myself now more than ever before. I live life as a prayer these days, and I love myself now more than I likely ever could have had the capacity to. I am self taught, and regularly visit genius artists who left a trail behind, or are presently doing so. This work specifically graced me with Egon Schiele’s presence after I added lighter hues of green to my skin. I am so inspired lately by the Gold Dust Geckos that are an invasive species to Hawaii. I love it here, and I hope to make many works that live beyond this here and now as we know it on instagram. I am not my social media handle, I am love.

Anastasiya Krokhmal

Moscow, Russia

Sleep

Oil on Paper, 38×27 cm

In this artwork, I tried to put the energy of sweet sleep, tranquility and a state of “no thoughts”. The girl in the painting is asleep, and nothing bothers her, nothing from the outside world touches her. This is the state in which each of us at least once strove to get.

Paola Pipoca

Brazil

Hiding to show

Self-Portrait Photography

In this dance of finding myself and incorporating who I may not, shape and form change constantly. The environment is fragile, and the self is unrecognizable, while I hold on in my artist identity playing with imagination and reality. In the end, I need to be sincere with myself, I will never know who I really am.

Holly Elan Watson

London, UK

Wish I Was By a Bonfire

42 x 29.7cm

This painting was made in my bedroom during lockdown whilst living in New Zealand. I desperately wanted to be outside, going out, staying up late, but was confined to my chilly flat. I transported myself somewhere else, where anything could be happening outside of the frame to create this glowing image.
I now live in London, far away from where this portrait was painted and really wish I could be back there. I live in a constant cycle of ‘the grass is always greener’ but I’m learning to appreciate the here and now!

Sylvie McClelland

San Francisco, California, USA

Don’t Mind The Bleed, Don’t Be Disastrously Weird

Oil on canvas, 12″ x 12″, 10″ x 10″

These works are a response to the perception of self on Instagram, especially as pertains to being an artist. Do we make work to amuse or to connect with others and what does it mean that we share these works on a platform that bills itself now primarily as a marketplace and a space that we endlessly scroll and tap our way through. Do we actually connect to others through this space or are our personalities, wants, needs and selves lost to the ether. Are we performing or really finding ourselves? Sylvie attended California College of Arts and Crafts and University of San Francisco for a Dual-Degree Bachelor of Fine Arts from 2000-04. They took a break from painting after college when their father passed away, resuming in 2016. They work primarily in oil paint in their San Francisco home studio.

Karina Brzostowski

Dubai

Self portrait

Colour pencils, 23x24cm

I don’t often do self portraits. It makes me feel uncomfortable. Mostly because I can’t grasp my complexity, or maybe because until a few weeks ago, I couldn’t fully accept myself. The study of psychology helped me; and 2 months ago, at the age of 41, I finally found out I was an HSP( highly sensitive person)! This was a relief because it just explained my differences in terms of behaviour, personality… And that I wasn’t alone to have this trait!
I have always been an outsider, too sensitive, very often chameleon and highly emotional.
I tried to convey spontaneity, roughness and simplicity in this self portrait by using colour pencils. The colours on the face are all the rainbow of emotions and feelings that I can experience like a human sponge. It’s often overwhelming but I guess on the bright side that this is the reason I can express myself though art.

Reyna Ramirez

Dallas, TX, USA

Under My Microscope

Oil pastel on canvas; 12inx16in

Im too analytical, too observant, and too stimulated by the things around me. One of the things I’m very conscious about is my hair. Im always mindful of the hair loss and it landing on my clothes or falling on the ground. I notice the split ends, the hair follicles, when one strand is curlier than others just as much as when one is straighter than the rest. I pay attention to where the hair starts changing colors. When the dark brown turns blonde and the blonde turns white. I think I have more silver hairs than a normal person my age does but, I blame that on hereditary. This self portrait is more than just about my relationship with my hair. I feel it’s a reflection of an integral part of my being and how it translates into my environment. I’m appreciative, I’m curious, and I’m attentive. These things give me the advantage in finding beauty in the ordinary and the unnoticed.

Julia von Kienlin

Munich, Germany

Me, Myself and I

Acrylic on canvas, 60x80cm

It was far from easy becoming me. It sounds like a cliché, but I had to stand up against my parents and my partner, and accept to live in strive with them. I had to take risks and most of all, I had to take the whole responsibility for my existence and future. Here I see myself, alone in my own flat. I can see defiance, and clarity, and pride, and sweetness. That´s all me. This was my first painting art critic Jerry Saltz liked on my Instagram. Sorry I have to tell this, but I was so proud when he did that. I saw it as a proof I am on the right way, a reward for the battles I had to fight. That´s also why the painting has a very special meaning for me.

Brittany Miller

New York City

You, Me, and Philip

42×30″

This painting is about a stretch of time in my life, rather than the moment of time it depicts. I am resting on a bed–my bed, a bed that I had been painting over and over for months in different ways. I had been making paintings about dreams, and the paintings take place in my bed. My boyfriend posed for me in the bed, and one of the paintings of him in the bed hangs above my head. The book I was looking at–a book of Philip Guston paintings–sits at the edge. I’m not sure who I think I am. I am a person who paints, and a person who sometimes is lying and resting on this bed, or reading a book on this bed. I am a person who loves someone else, and sometimes I paint that person, and sometimes that person is in this bed.

Tirazheh Eslami

Idaho, USA

Self portrait I, II, III

Digital Art, 18×24

My work is a bridge between my past and present. I seek to broaden cultural awareness, specifically to communicate to Western society the richness and beauty of my own Persian culture. I hope to build a chronicle, which successfully encapsulates Persian history and symbolic cultural events. I am inspired, changed and challenged by the experience of living in two different cultures. The marriage of these experiences is at the center of my studio work. I have been able to adopt my own style and sense of ownership by integrating the different artistic techniques, methods, and materials. Furthermore, I have found my own voice through merging Persian traditional symbols with my new western style. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to represent Persian culture to Western society. This privilege has motivated my work. Though there are many opinions about Iran (the culture, way of life, and religion), I have done my best to illustrate what I see as the true beauty and authenticity of Persian life and heritage.

Avvassena

Italy

Extension

background: theatrical maks; technique: acrilic vinyl colors, fluorescent colors on canvas; 100×100 (cm)

My artistic research is centered on the perception of the identity. In particular, I analyse the relationship of the individual to his/her inner reality and to others.
We wear many masks, they protect and imprison us, hiding us behind shields of appearances. Only in the darkness, in solitude, we can see the true light of what lies behind them, and we can choose whether to accept and overcome it or go on, with a new awareness of fiction.
The submitted piece is the translation into my self-portrait of what I found during my research. I represented my face on a background made of many anonymous masks. The expression of the portrait is deformed by a gesture.
Into the darkness, when the black-light is switched up, the richness of colors appears and the masks disappears.
It could be interpreted as the attempt to free the real myself from the masks of everyday, but the final result remains uncertain. A question is left open: does someone exist under these masks?

Melika

New York

Self Portrait in Pink Light

28×22

My name is Melika. I am an NYC born artist and organizer. I am time-space. I am in the now always. I am a co-creator.

Avideh Salmanpour

Iran/Tehran

Another of me

Acrylic and marker

I am always present in my paintings, but in my new collection, I paid more attention to myself and my body. Many people talk about beauty in dealing with me, but inside me, there is another who is not beautiful…

Elsa Ordoñez

Ecuador

Plastic Artist

Oil on canvas 40 x 32 cm.

Only know that I was born to create art, that is my life goal, painting and sculpting works of art, that is my light, my happiness.

Daisy-Anne Dickson

Duluth, GA

From A to Z, with Rose Colored Glasses , Vardøger

Acrylic and ink on canvas, Acrylics with puzzle pieces on canvas, 18” x 24”

My self portraits began many years ago as an exploration of exactly this question. I have come to the simple conclusion I am living my way to the answer.

I am submitting my very first self portrait narrative from 17 years ago, “Vardøger” and one of my more recent “A to Z, with Rose Colored Glasses”. I feel these two works show the evolution of my artwork, as well as my inner self. Both deal with concepts of our perceived selves vs. our authentic self. The first deals with revisiting our “old self” with compassion and understanding as we’ve evolved in our journey. While the later focuses on forgiveness: “At it’s core, forgiveness is not, in fact, about the other person. It’s about us, and what we believe we need in order to move through a reckoning of the self” —Leigh Huggins. I am an artist/painter living outside Atlanta, GA. I move between narratives and abstract expressionism, using mostly acrylics, inks and mixed media on canvas or wood panels. Art is my vehicle for self exploration and growth.

Kristina Nabazaite

Lithuania

sheep

A2,A6

a human

Minaa Mohsin

Lahore, Pakistan

Untitled

Oil on Canvas/24 x 30 inches

We exist in a time of overnight superstars and multi-millionaires. The success of that comes from self-packaging. We are consuming products as well as being consumed as one as well. Mirroring advertised lifestyles and products through Instagram, to me, is a contemporary way of accepting the presence of, and dependency on consumer culture in every aspect of life. We are definitely not ignorant, yet are unable to break through because we thrive in dwelling in this consumer craze. Perhaps then, we all really are just (liberated) prisoners, of our own device.

Kira McMillan

Maryland, USA.

What am I Going to do With My Face Today?,

“16 x 18”

When we get ready to present ourselves to the world there are so many possibilities of what that person could be. Every day a calculation is made of how to appropriately represent ourselves. Most of us choose to find the medium of what appeases ourselves and appeases others.
Much of my work focuses on the way different aspects of life are experienced. My current fixations are childhood and womanhood.

Silvia Sarsano

Berlin, Germany

Everything is illuminated but me

80x80x5 cm

This is a painting made a few months after I left the hospital where I stayed one month because of depression. I was not feeling much better but I could function and I had to put on canvas the way I perceived myself at the time. The strong feeling I was living with (and sometimes I still live with) was the shame of feeling envious whenever I could witness the carefree existence the others had, which I felt I was only a spectator of. It was like living in the shadow cast by the others´ life full of light. Today I still live on the border between the wise, cheerful, strong and fun loving person I (think/suppose) I am, and the fragile, insecure, teenage-like adult hidden inside that shell.

Yumzhana Sui

Russia, Ulan-Ude

Subconscious

canvas, acrylics, plasticine

I am an artist and my work is introspection. Self-therapy, analysis of internal and external processes. I can be different and I’m changing all the time. Self-portraits helps me to state the current period and continue to move

Kristina Rogers

Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Egomania

Colored Pencil on Paper / 9″ x 12″

I am an entire world inside my head. I consist of thoughts, war, connection, love, wants, and needs. I can be labeled from the ‘outside world’ as queer, gender-nonconforming, mentally ill, young, a friend, a student, a child, etc. but in reality I exist as a battle. From outside and from within, my thoughts and emotions battle with the necessary physical container that is my body. I have no idea who I am, and for that I’d like to think that I don’t really know what I am.

Srotoswini Sinha

Kolkata, India

Self-Criticism

1.9ft x 2.7ft Mixed media on mount board

I am Srotoswini Sinha from Kolkata, India. I’m currently pursuing BFA in History of Art at Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan. Some of the mediums that I work with are ink, charcoal, acrylic and digital prints. I also do a bit of photography and photo manipulations.
This work reflects the daily toxic practice of self-doubt and criticism at every step. Here I am questioning each and every decision I take even when I’m not at a conscious state of mind.

Linh Nguyen

Hanoi, Vietnam

Self-portrait with hand

Oil on canvas/45cmx60cm

I am Linh Nguyen and I am a visual artist based in Vietnam. I’ve always been interested in the topic on identity and individualism, and I want to create narratives of these through the form of portraiture. I usually paint people that are close to me – who I feel I understand the most, so that I could be able to tell their stories visually. Self-portrait is the theme I’ve explored the most so far because I think I understand myself the most and I want to express my feelings through my painting. “Self-portrait with hand” is a recent work that I painted during quarantine time. This time has been significant as I’ve decided to quit my full-time job to become a painter. There are a lot of uncertainties and confusion on who I really am, what would the future hold. At the same time, I feel happy and confident to follow my passion and I would like to portray this contradictory state of mind in the painting.

Sloane Cabrera

San Francisco, California, USA

Still Me

18inx24in

I am my emotions and the jumbled-up mess that is me. I am an artist who uses painting as a form of therapy. Art functions as a way for me to dissect what I am feeling and put it into a visual format. By painting myself I am able to understand who I am as a human being. This painting embodies my struggles with anxiety and depression.

Verity Corvo

Florida, USA

Trust Fall, When Shadow Speaks

Photogrpahy; 16×20

The photos depict my struggle with shadow and light, trusting my intuition, and presence versus dissociation. In all the parts of myself there is a struggle of duality…and ultimately a struggle of who ‘shows up’. Often I step back and allow creativity to lead the way; this allows me to sit with the lesson and the deeper meaning of why I needed to create it. Who am I? I am a body and a soul. I am lost and find myself frequently. I am at peace and also swirling in chaos of my own design. I am trying like hell to be seen without actually having to *be seen*. I’m a stranger to myself which is beautiful because I get to meet myself over and over again. I’m grateful for the opportunity to willingly open myself to vulnerability. I choose to live in the beauty and terror of this life.

Aleksandra Man

London, UK

Still

Acrylic Paint on Wood, 40 x 50 cm

When creating this work, I considered deeply how I would define myself without resorting to the words used by my family and friends. But then it struck me that most of my life, I have been attempting to fulfil someone else’s expectations of who I was, whether it was my parents, my kids, or society itself. I struggle to separate myself from the descriptions of my identity offered to me by others, especially in a fast-paced lifestyle when one has little time to stop and reflect. The question also stands whether I even need to separate myself from these definitions or if I would be anything at all without them? This piece strives to reflect my desire to be still just for a moment and appreciate who I am and who I want to be.

Diane Baires

Lakeland, FL, USA

I LAY DOWN WHEN I GET STRESSED

30 x 44 inches

I am a practicing artist at ART/ifact Studios in Lakeland, Florida. My work deals with familial memory and personal identity. I created this work as a reaction to the feelings of uncertainty during the global pandemic. I have a habit of laying down when I get stressed.

Christy Lorio

New Orleans, LA, USA

The Perpetual Threat of Loss

digital photography

I am a writer and photographer creating work about my experience as a stage IV colorectal cancer patient. I hold an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans and I’m currently working on my MFA in Studio Art at UNO. My photos are forthcoming in galleries in Los Angeles, CA and Rome, Italy. These photos were made in Barataria Preserve, the swamps that I grew up near. This land is important to me because it reminds of my dad, who died from the same cancer I have 20 years ago. When I’m there, I feel most like myself and I feel the strong presence of my dad. I work with hair, which acts as a stand in for myself as a self-portrait. My bald head is the only visible sign of my illness, which makes me stand out in a crowd yet I also feel invisible, like a medical outcast in certain social situations.

Kryštof Novotný

Czech Republic

Self-portrait with a lion and piranhas, Self-Portrait

75 x 120 cm, 75 x 80 cm

My name is Kryštof Novotný and I live in Czech Republic. I have been painting since I was a child. After high school I decided to study History of Art, because I wanted to have more scope about curatorial work. Now I am trying to fully start my artistic career, open a studio and things related to it. Since 2017, I have been painting my self-portrait every year, and I will always imprint my current life situations and moods in each of them. My self-portraits are always very symbolic, and as my favorite painter Frida Kahlo said: “I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.“

Karen Brussat Butler

USA

Self Portrait

30”x22”

Mother, spouse, grandmother, sister, aunt, cousin, friend, artist and daughter of two deceased parents who helped me become who I am today. My passion is painting and drawing on paper and lithographic stone. I love to observe and sketch characters in unusual situations. My favorite place to be is on a lake, sitting on the porch of a cabin looking out over the lake, painting or sketching. I enjoy all types of music, and look forward to attending live music venues in various places; urban, rural, auditorium, bar, living room concert or even on the lawn in a park or a pier on the water. And with the music I like to have a Margarita, vodka martini or draft beer. As for food, anything goes for me as long as it is “really good” and it can be shared with close friends and family. Philosophically, I am still evolving, but recognize, I prefer to spend more time just creating.

Farhad Nikfam

Baku, Azerbaijan

Self-portrait

70x50cm oil on canvas

I am Farhad Nikfam, painter from Baku, Azerbaijan. Born in 1987. State Academy of Fine Arts graduate. Did my MA in Graphic design and currently working on my PhD. I have been painting since I was student and participated in domestic group exhibitions. My works have been displayed by online galleries internationally. I consider my style close to primitivism although I am not a huge fan of naming or categorizing art to styles. If it is clear to viewer what was intended to express there is no need for names. I want my paintings to be received for ideas behind them not only their aesthetic characteristics. Future I imagine is a borderless world with equal rights for anyone no matter one’s skin color, gender identity or religion. I do believe in power of art in shifting changes in society and sparking minds for achieving this peaceful coexistence.

Kayla L Prigg

New York

Beaver/ Bucktooth, Freak

oil on wood 11″x9″, Oil on wood 11″x9″;

Who am I? I am Kayla, Kayla who is many things. I think I know who I am but I am constantly changing, growing, we all are. No one knows you better than you. Often to others we are one dimensional, they only see one version of us, at work, at school, at the store, but we are all much more than that. Perspective is important, so use compassion when viewing others, we may not be what we seem. The art work I am submitting today are from two different series, After Death and FREAK. After Death, my most recent series, is amazingly similar to this shows idea of familiar strangers. The idea that when you see a picture of someone you don’t often think of their life, their dreams and asperations, they become just another face. FREAK is about my struggles with bullying and overcoming the words people applied to me by literally showing what that would look like and owning it.

Parastoo Haddadi

Iran

Freedom wanted mind

Acrylic / 26.4*35

The portrait includes Parastoo’s face and her name that means swallow bird, swallow is the symbol of peace and love. There are colorful fishes to show her colorful internal world which wants to achieve freedom and endless happiness as a woman.

Stephen Severn

Toronto, Canada

Self Portrait in Yellow

Digital Photograph/8.5×11″

Who do I become when I am at work? How does my career contribute to the construction of my identity? How do the objects around me contribute to the construction of my identity?

Self Portrait in Yellow explores recent theoretical inquiries which dispute the separation of mind from matter, instead suggesting that our cognitive processes extend into the things around us. This work positions objects in the construction of meaning and identity and challenges traditional self-portraiture.

Does this self-portrait reveal any less or more about my identity that the iterations of my career as a Window Dresser? A Prop Stylist? A Still Life Photographer? And how does representing my profession as my identity construct meaning for you, the viewer? Stephen Severn is a still life photographer whose practice provides a space for the exploration of human and object ontogeny. His work explores objects not as representations of human identity, but in a process of becoming alongside human existence, where human-object relations intertwine and transform through time, space, and movement.

Esmee Balcewicz

Glasgow, UK

Self Portrait with Yellow Hat

A5, watercolour on paper

I am a Glasgow based illustrator and maker. I love colour, clothes and pop culture; I use self portraits as a way to warm up to a bigger drawing, as a way to pass the time, and as a way to ease me into feeling excited about drawing after a bout of inactivity.

Jing Kong

China

Self-Portrait

gouache On paper, 26.5 x 38 cm

I am a Chinese woman, I love painting, I’m most eager to pursue my heart. I love life, nature and animals. I think painting is a way to explore human and animal souls.
In the afternoon, I took off my glasses and tried to draw my self-portrait quickly. I started when the sun was not clear, and stopped when the sun was setting.

Grace

Nashville TN

Zoo Eyes

11×11

Grace Hall is an interdisciplinary artist from Nashville Tennessee. She uncovers the untold stories of the past, present and future with bold use of unusual colors and materials. These qualities allow Grace’s work to become illustrative in not only it’s context, but of its subject’s energy, personality and psyche as well.

Sarita Osei-tutu

London, UK

Abena – Tuesday Born

Oil/acrylic/pastel on canvas

I remember showing this painting to a fellow artists I admire, I wanted to know what they thought of it, there reply was “oh this is a self portrait”, I was a bit surprised because although there are aspects of my face such as they eyes i used for it, I didn’t create this painting viewing it as a self portrait.

This painting represents the innocence and the purity of a child or child like “being”, it also shows the reality of the world and the pain induced by various experiences that take that innocence and change the way you view yourself and the world.

I don’t relate to this image, or maybe I don’t see myself in it because to me she holds an innocence that I no longer have, or that I no longer see. I think I am a person who is blind to who I truly am, a person who is trying to see herself again by exploring herself through art.

Noelle Yongwei Barr

Southern California

Father , Made in China II

18 x 24 in.

I have often imagined myself in the eyes of an external gaze — an ambitious, artistic, intellectual, violinist. Focusing on how others saw me, jumping to how I present myself in the world, on social media, at school. But I often neglected to take an introspective look at where I came from, and in light of the recent hate crimes against the AAPI community — it became more important than ever to explore my story of origin as a transracial Chinese-adoptee. As a post-feminist, I aim to acknowledge the complexities of identity — particularly with regard to the relationship between race and gender. As an adopted Asian American woman, my exterior appearance contradicts my interior truth. Stereotypes and micro-aggressions weigh on my conscience as I try to stay true to myself. And in truth, I am stilling finding myself — finding the strength to retain my convictions in spite of fears of loss or rejection that stem from the experience of adoption. Nonetheless, one facet that is fundamental to who I am is that I am a cisgender female Chinese-Adoptee.

Beatriz Dominguez Aleman

Puerto Rico

Hotel Quarantine

4 x 5

“Hotel Quarantine” is an eye into my inner state of mind after living through political instability in Chile, my home country, as well as a devastating pandemic. It represents, through its composition, the struggle of coping with mental health, body image and self-esteem that has intensified during this past year of cloistering. My quarantine journey into self-love and acceptance is related to the repeated sexual abuses I endured during my teenage-young adult life. Through the lens of my camera and an artistic intervention, I captured a moment of solitude and sadness in a hotel in Santiago, Chile.

Cigdem Chatzoudas

Turkey

I am a visual thinker. I feel and think visually. I have a tendency to visualise my thoughts and emotions symbolically and I think I’m like this since I was going to primary school. Indeed I feel that some part of myself is always missing, so I feel always eager to explore and somewhat feel the need to connect with people, show them a story about it. I enjoy expressing my thoughts, my sensitivity against life itself. For me It is like a therapy to handle the overbearing life. Beyond the culture, geography and gender I tend to focus and inspire from the emotional aspects of being human. My work mostly shows itself as figurative and visual expression with the surreal elements that draw me to play in the space between figurative and abstraction. My work is definitely personal but presents the narratives as universal themes. Such as: sense of belonging, the bond between self. As presented here, my works mostly exploring the concepts as mental heath, place, body and space, intimacy.

Alison Carpenter-Hughes

Leicester, UK

Kiss Face

Embroidery on cotton/26cm x 40.5cm

I am a little bit lost, a little bit found. Each year a part of the thing I like about myself seems to get chipped away, but I also have the realisation of the elements that I don’t like. I try to hold on to the fun, loving, playful, youthful, free, sensual, adventurous person I once was, and still want to be, while trying to rid myself of the darker parts that self-sabotage, that screw up, wake me in the middle of the night and riddle me with self-hate, doubt and guilt. I am a work in progress, sometimes a shadow, sometimes a force. I would rather be who I hope to be. ‘Kiss Face’ is a little of who I like to be.

Fred Fabre

London, UK

Pussy Pride

Oil on linen /aluminium -70×50 cm

Self portrait with cat in homage to Pussy Riot – ‘it takes courage to be a pussy’
I have challenged gender identity since early in my work .

Ruth Adelyne

Jakarta, Indonesia

Missed

Digital Drawing on A4 paper size

A muted persona

Maruja Panti

Philippines

Wear It Best

Acrylic on canvas/ 18×24 inches

I think I am the ocean. Waves on my feet. Salt in my hair.

Iren

Ukraine

Redhead Girl

Oil on canvas. 20×30. Summer 2015

Sometimes you look at the mirror and don’t understand: who is this? Am I? Why does this stranger stare at me so curiously? Or dramatic, or worrying, or dazedly…Is this me or the world so changeable? Everything that happens in our lives reflects in our eyes. Eyes have never lied. I suppose I am no ordinary person, who has own universe and every planet there it’s part of me: my emotions, my fears, my dreams, my disappointments, my love, my inspiration, my joy, my sorrow, my ambitions, my anger, my kindness, my generosity, my weakness, my reliability. When anybody touches me he has a feeling as if he plunges into the ocean. This ocean can cover you with a wave and carry you away to the underworld. Or this ocean can break you with storm waves, but also can hold you on the surface and gently touch with waves. My ocean can destroy you, or can give a road to the place of the goal. I am a beautiful and scary universe. It depends on which side to open me.

Sean Anthony Winn

California, USA

Last night I thought about drwning.

Oil on canvas, 80×102 cm

During times of crisis it’s hard to answer who we think we are, or what we attribute to society. But the better question is what am I? I am a son, brother, friend, creative, spiritual, self-reflective, and an emotional human being. All these traits aspire to be a person who cares about people, independent, artist, ally in all spaces, kind; shorter version, I think of myself as a celestial being. I think I am a person who fights societal normalities to live a truthful and honest life. I am my emotions and it helps me connect to others.

Alex Boyd

Mexico

Subconscious Self Portrait Study

Digital Illustration, 11×17″

INSTAGRAM | WEBSITE

This is a sketch of a self portrait I did during a workshop where I was asked to draw myself without any reference and the teachers would interpret the result. I felt curious about it, so I asked what kind of attributes they based their interpretations on and told me a lot of things to consider, such as the cleanliness of the strokes and the pressure applied on them, the way the subject is looking at, even if he/she is drawn in a front view it would be very different than doing a profile portrait drawing. I decided to do a color version of the drawing and did a more realistic piece since I considered those things could also be important factors to define one’s personality. This piece would then result in me discovering how nostalgic I am, how I have a big preference or attachment to my maternal family figures, how obsessive I am for detail and order and how I also have some sort of fear of being alone, which I had never thought about before.

Anastasia Viaznikova

Belarus

Under the mask

Acrylic, oil pastel on stretched canvas. 40*50 cm

I can tell you for a fact that I have many masks and no one knows which one is the real one.

Kemi Fontaine

London, UK

44.44

At this present age I see myself as a bit of a 4 headed monster. My innocence , my curiousness, my chaos and acceptance all seem to have a different face and say in my processing life as myself

Anne-Bénédicte Girot

France

In depth #1 , In depth #2

Ink on paper , 21 x 28,5 cm for both

Still a work in progress, whether it’s me as an artist or this series of inks.
When doubt creeps in and you have to dig and search and investigate and always start over.

David

Guatemala

Selfie

32 x 54 cm

I was born in Guatemala in 1995, I´m a student, neighbor, and sometimes Artist. I am all those and others that are manifested in my passions, my sensitivity, my reason or in the moral ethical swamp. I must confess that the diversity of ways, in which I see things is not special at all. My father named me as the biblical character David, I don’t know if it makes sense in my life somehow, but I didn’t want to be the only fool who doesn’t mention it here. I´m a Visual Artist, but I consider myself more passionate about Art or Art aesthetics.

Buddy Chris

Surrey, United Kingdom

Rorschach Test Card XI

Mixed digital media, 9″x11″

INSTAGRAM | WEBSITE

I have achieved a lot in a short space of time by using art to release my creativity, but for this project I wanted to go back to where it all started; that is my obsession with the Hermann Rorschach psychodiagnostic test. It was a useful tool for leaving my audience to their own devices by asking them “what do you see”. This self-portrait challenge to capture who I think I am turns my original approach on its head and it’s now me who has to answer the question “what do I see”. It was important for me to only use the right side of my face as this is the half of the brain that channels creativity and imagination. For most of my life the left half of my brain has done all the work; logic, math, analytics, planning and caution. Giving the right half of my brain a chance to thrive has given me better balance. I see a balanced individual, but the more I look the more I find. I see a Rorschach inkblot.

Afi Ese

Houston, TX, USA

Self-portrait #7

Charcoal on cold-pressed paper 14×17″

Have you ever really dissected yourself? Have you compartmentalized all the parts of your mind, personality, or spirit? As a retired psychotherapist, I find myself incorporating thoughts and theories of psychology into my work. This particular piece is a visual representation of my life, how I often feel like I’m falling to pieces while the world sees a well-put together person. To find true happiness, I have to identify and work on areas that are keeping me from that happiness. Through charcoal work, I discover things about myself I never noticed before. Some pieces are light and some dark, as reflected in the use of light and hard pressure to achieve a variety of shades, but they are all apart of me. This work has come out of lockdown during COVID and my isolation has produced a stream of consciousness that is constantly interpreting events in the outer world then I turn it into artwork. The focus is self-exploration, honesty, growth, and healing.

Ksenija Španec

Zagreb, Croatia

How I have become invisible

pinhole photography, silver gelatin prints / 30 x 30 cm

I am a fragile human being. A grain in the sand. A drop in the ocean. A leaf on the tree, changing colors with the season, but only dancing with the wind. I am the same as the others, but yet unique, never to be repeated.

Michaela Wheater

London, UK

Altered State and Undertow

Pencil on paper. 105cm x 118cm

These self portraits form part of two series’ ‘Altered State’ and ‘Undertow’ created since the beginning of lockdown 1. The drawings were made initially as working drawings from which to make prints but begun to take on a life of their own. They are mirror images and show the physical me literally as I see myself. They are presented in chronological order and document change. I was using drawing to take back control. ‘Altered State’ shows gravity causing strain and discomfort. Later my head is literally pushed, pulled and dragged in ‘Undertow’, a further metaphor for challenging resilience and breaking point. The act of drawing becoming increasingly involved. This is evident in the toll taken on the paper which is hung to show its distortion, a direct result of the pressure from etched and incised pencil lines where the drawings have been worked and reworked.

Mpumelelo Buthelezi

Pimville, Soweto

INGILOSI//An Angel

122cm x 58cm

“INGILOSI” is a Zulu term that we use in my native language which simply means an Angel. According to the Christian faith an angel is known as a servant of God. INGILOSI it’s about being a faithful servant of Jesus too. This photo series is about void and exploring being Holy than thou. It’s about expressing different aspects of being an angel and discovering different ways of being and seeing. I had the pleasure of photographing myself recently in my room as INGILOSI and exploring different aspects of being Holy in your comfortable place. But yet also this series also ties into ISOLATION as well-because as I was photographing myself in my room I felt isolated in my own environmental space. The images also represent a creative approach to reinforcing the importance of self-isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. It was a wonderful process to document. It’s an extended way of myself exploring my own ideas of being an angel and my personal gender identity.

Aurelie Guichard

Lisbon, Portugal

How does it feel

Photography

“I am a name.
I am a body.
I am a mind, my inner child and wild woman.
I am feminine and masculine.
I am light and darkness.
My inner universe connecting to the outer.
Who am I?
The more I get to know myself, the more complex:
A complete paradox.
I am everything and its opposite.
I am water, the river ever changing as it flows,
Evolving through life like fire:
‘The most tangible of all visible mysteries’.” *Leigh Hunt

Iulia Hulea

Romania

Self-Portrait In My Dreams

Ink and Pencil on 250gsm paper, 14.8 x 14.8 cm

As a child, I was never good with words. Growing up, I was never good with expressing my feelings – these things modeled the emotionally-constipated being I am today and my works are the only way in which I document the relationship between myself, the world, and its effects on me. Nothing I see is ever forgotten – a rotten orange, a green chair left on a street corner, a velvet glove that was thrown into a lake – they always come back to the surface and my mind constantly recycles them into new ideas. I strive to create sincere art, and my biggest wish is for others to find themselves in what pieces I put out in the world.
The journey of knowing myself through self-portraits started in the past year – that’s how I saw the change of both my body and mental state while living through a pandemic. It is therapeutic and has helped me in discovering my strengths and my biggest fears.

Wonai Haruperi

Zimbabwe

My Eyes

Digital

I think I am my name. Wonai is a Shona girl’s name commanding people ”to look or to see”. I believe in my existence as a collective not singular experience: I was named after my ancestor and my people believe that names are a kind of foretelling of one’s destiny, who they will become. I think I am my people’s eyes. Before I could walk I was given something to do, a unique expression of me that would serve to collect and tell the stories of my people and when the work is done call others to come and see/look. I think I am MY eyes. And through them I am able to love and be good and be free because I can see God EVERYWHERE even in what is slight. I am everything I experience through my eyes, which gracefully pass on to my spirit and soul in the present. I am and will always just be Wonai, foretold; ever experiencing; led by my eyes.

Jeremy Wolf

London, UK

self portrait smoking

charcoal on paper/11×16″

I’m an artist, chef, husband, a sometimes smoker, often drinker. I’m stressed by my lack of success, but heartened by the potential I still feel I possess.

Irina Kondratiuk

Ukraine, Kyiv

Harmony of Opposites

A3 paper size

During quarantine, I spent more and more time thinking about who I am. My Intaglio print “Harmony of opposites” is about emotions. I portrayed a cheerful mask and a sad one. In life, all our emotions are very important. There are not only negative emotions in a person without good and vice versa.

Elise Wojtowicz

Richmond, VA, USA

Contemplating a Nose Job Self-Portrait

Photography

How are our identities formed? How do we perceive reality? What makes us human? These are the questions that I explore through my artwork. My practice is centered in photography, through both digital methods and alternative processes, as well as material experiments within those confines. My current projects contend with concepts of matrilineal heritage, nature and humanity, and the passage of time

The work I have presented here is a sample of my self-portraiture. I began this practice out of necessity, finding myself physically and emotionally isolated from others. In time, it has grown into the basis for much of my work.

Contemplating a Nose Job Self-Portrait” is a digital photograph made of a kind of alter ego of mine.

Dottie Lo Bue

California, USA

House

Oil / 24×36 inches

I just think it’s weird to be someone at all.

Sade Phoenix

Barbados

Self Portrait 1, Self Portrait 2

coloured pencil on paper/ 11×13

My name is Sade Phoenix and i am a Barbadian Visual artist. My main focus revolves around portraiture, i am interested in representation and the different features which makes an individual unique. The technique of layering and building colours to create these skintone and texture are a major part of my work, and thus creates a uniqueness in each piece.

Clare Thomas

Canada

Walk in Woods, We were young once

8″ x 10″, 5″ x 5.5″

I don’t know who I am any more. In 2020 my Dad died of COVID-19, and now it seems I live in the past as much, if not more, than the present. To the outside world I am a 58 year-old artist living on Vancouver Island. In my head I am a girl, a teenager, a woman in her 30’s – a daughter, sister, wife, mum – and I am elsewhere, in England, in Manitoba. The works I have submitted start with an outside view – they are all derived from photographs of myself taken by someone else. I photocopied these photographs and collaged them onto card, adding elements from old drawings and magazine cut-outs, together with lines in ink and carbon, to create new and fanciful contexts for my different selves. For all I know, they are just as accurate as my memories.

Adriana Mederos

United States

Without Epidermis, a Self- portrait

Floss embroidery on linen. Approximately 10”x13”

I am raw, vulnerable… and, feeling more exposed than ever now that a “return to normalcy” (whatever that means) is within view.

Wayne Clough

Leeds, UK

Unspectacular Male

60x50cm

I am a left leaning artist/painter. I am a white working class man he/him/his from Yorkshire. Blueish eyes, curly brown hair. Six feet twoish. Weight unknown. Father, depressive, with the weight of the world on his shoulders but avoids activism as it may change the world. Admires Noam Chomsky, Neil Hannon, Gerhard Richter, Tracy Emin, Greta Thunberg. Despises capitalism, neoliberalism, racism. Likes to think I’m a progressive but occasionally exhibits conservative behaviour. Yellow teeth not so beautiful smile. Feminist, anti elitist, pro LGBTQ+. Favours identity but feels individualism is a corrosive force in society. Atheist who’s terrified of dying. Rationalist, irrationalist generation Xer. Suspicious of baby boomers and flat earthers. Desperate for gallery representation and a mortgage. My self portrait is a flimsy representation of who I think I am and painting may only ever be an imperfect or provisional mode of expression by which to distil a sense of selfhood. However am I still compelled to make portraits and try in some way to reveal concrete facets of personality.

Sofia Piacentini

San Diego, CA, USA

i like jazz

oil 36×36″

I am an artist. At times I don’t know who I am. I feel like I am just one possibility. When I meet other people, I meet different possibilities of who I could’ve become. But I reside in this body, born from the parents who gave me life, in a city where I find other versions of myself. I just wear different clothes sometimes.

Monika Lorincova

United Kingdom

Preserving sanity 301- Piano hour, Everyone’s a hairdresser

Acrylic on paper- 84 x 59 cm, 59 x 42 cm

Through these spontaneous self-portraits painted during the 2021 lockdown in England, I tried to interpret the quirky, and perhaps random, aspects of my personality, with each painting revealing a little bit more at the time. Preserving sanity was painted during those long winter evenings with the need for new entertainment. This painting speaks of playfulness and fun, but also loneliness, with the tiger acting as a spectator and companion. Everyone’s a hairdresser was simply a “brave attempt to get things done” despite the restricting circumstances.

Marina Petrova

Russia, Cherepovets

Self-portrait with mrdanga

Oil, acrylic, canvas 40×70 cm (15.8×27.6 inches), 2021

Did I think in my youth that one day I would become a nun? I remember this winter. I celebrated the New Year in India, in a male monastery. For 4 years I have been a nun and every year I came to the men’s temple with a ladyfriend. We were allowed to stay there because we followed all the strict rules. And it werent very simple. On that day, Jan 5, 2015, there was a lunar eclipse, when all the monks shaved their heads. A ladyfriend asked me – do you want to try? And I, a gentle, feminine girl said – Yes! I want to understand what it is like to shave like monks. Sitting on the floor, holding a mrdanga – an Indian drum, and looking at the sacred river Yamuna, I thought – how lucky I am to be here, in the temple of the Lord, forgetting about all the problems and worries. I got a lot of experience and realizations when I lived in a parallel world, somewhere in a small sacred city.

Michaela Moffett

Fullerton, CA

Quarantine Morning, Quarantine Afternoon, Quarantine Evening

9″x 12″ Oil paint on panel

I am a 26 year old artist, exploring techniques such as color relationships, layering, shape, and form. This collection of self portraits was completed in the middle of 2020, where I found myself deeper and deeper in isolation from friends. My bed became my one place of comfort and escape from the chaos that raged worldwide. I decided to depict myself laying down, feeling apathetic and unmotivated throughout the day as a way to process my grief and emotions.

Renata Franzky

Germany

me and my icon

170 x 130

Since the early 2000s, my main concern has been dealing with the human figure and everyday life with techniques such as acrylic, oil, woodcut and lithography with topics such as figure, human being, everyday life, loneliness, isolation but also soulfulness in gestures of daily life. I concentrate in on spaces, colours and lines. Thereby the line adopts the graphical layer true to the motto “the line is the human itself”. My focus is on questions such as: how can painting reach people today? How can the artist’s message touch the heart of the viewer? Is it still possible in an overwhelmingly digital world? Much of my inspiration is an acknowledgement of a childhood spanning drastically different cultures and worlds. Influenced by the fusion of the different countries and cultures, from the harshness of the eastern steppes of Kazakhstan to Central Europe, I process these impressions in my work.

Margaux Rebourcet

France

La Fronce

30 x 42 cm

I am emotions, aspirations, I am my own expectations, I am my past and my present. I am my relationships and struggles. I am a body of senses, a mind with its complex thoughts. I am “La Fronce”, la “Grump” and la “Froide Incandescence”. I am familiar as I have coherent existence and a base founded in my past and experiences and I am also a stranger to myself, as for what I will become. I am also a stranger to the Margaux people experience. In my work, I don’t particularly want to do an autoportrait which is an intentional representation of oneself by oneself. I simply use myself as a model as it is pragmatically easier. I represent a model who is by opportunity me. But it is true that I do sometimes find it easier to use myself as a model, because If I want to capture a specific emotion or sensation, I will have more control over myself versus over someone that I don’t know. It is more instinctive and soothing for control freaks like me :).

Sofia Hurtado Montes

Bogotá, Colombia

sometimes when I feel blue, I go non-verbal

Acrylic on canvas / 50.8 x 40.7 cm

In this artwork I portrayed how I look and feel when I am depressed. As a person that struggles with mental illnesses, sometimes my identity can seem tainted by mental health crises, and I can feel like I am not myself, but I also am hyper-aware that without this struggles I wouldn’t be who I am today. I usually am a very verbal person, when I feel blue I go non-verbal.

Richelle Forsey

Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Self Portrait in Blue

cyanotype 9″x12″

I am an artist, urban explorer, and photographer. I draw inspiration for my work through exploring built environments, urban remains, and abandonments that I compulsively photograph and collects artifacts from. I am interested in the results of aleatory creative processes and making objects, experimental films, and images for: slow looking, to spark imagination, and make sense of the contemporary world. My work has been shown in Canada, the US, and abroad, as well as collaboratively in the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, and Scotiabank Nuit Blanche (Toronto).

I am a founding member of the photography collective TLR Club, a member of Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, and the graphic artist for the indie experimental music label Aural Tethers. “self portrait in blue” is a conflation of digital and analogue photography strategies to generate a mediated flat representation of my face in cyanotype and has been described as “you are a beautiful human and this does not reflect that in my opinion”.

Rebecca Moss Guyver

Suffolk, UK

Self Portrait in Eden

30 x 22 cm

I live in a colourful world of pattern and plants. Painting helps me fix these things in time. I use egg tempera because I like to reflect the luminosity that I see in the world and because it feels natural but permanent. I like to paint still life and I like to inhabit my still life paintings.

Cairo Mo

Berkeley, CA

t(een/eeth/estosterone) , untitled self portrait

oil on canvas 44″x44″ , digital 8.5″x13″

My name is Cairo Mo (he/they). I am a painter and new media artist based in Berkeley, CA. As a trans masculine person, I practice art-making as healing, ritual, and celebration. My lived experience as a trans and non-binary person informs my work, which often concerns liminality and the tensions situated at the boundaries between two worlds. Working in a combination of oil, gouache, and digital media, I arrange colour to create nostalgic, dreamlike images, often combining rendered paint with textual and graffiti-like elements. When I paint myself, I am able to exert full control over the way I am presented to the world. As a trans person, the autonomy and agency that a self-portrait grants me is freeing and something special that I haven’t been able to find elsewhere. My self portraits at various points in my transition capture emotions that lie below the surface, feelings that I cannot express that are able to emerge through my paintings. It has been fulfilling to witness my evolution through my self portraits, as they change from melancholy to confident and joyful.

Stefan Doru Moscu

Romania

True self

Oil on canvas, 50×70 cm

I am sure that self perception could be often distorted from the reality, influenced by the narcissistic or other psychological factors, so maybe I don’t know who I am, objectively speaking. What I know is that life is always surprising and I have an introverted way of sorting things out. In this self portrait I represented myself with a mask, which is not that bad for me to wear it, because I often hide my emotions and feelings from the world in order to feel safe.

Ayan Dawn

India

The self trapped in a veil

My name is Ayan Dawn and I am from India. I am currently pursuing M.A in English Literature from University of Delhi(India). I am a part of all I see. The three photographs that I am submitting are titled “The self trapped in a veil”. I really have a problem when it comes to expressing myself. So, I feel the veil is a comfortable defense. But again another self of me wants to express and be vocal and that self struggle behind the veil. The photographs try to show that.

Sean Taras

San Antonio, TX, USA

Act Natural

oil on canvas, 16×20

I’m a wandering artist currently based in San Antonio, Texas. This work represents the feeling of anxiety that comes with being on display. As an artist, I attempt to pull away the mask and show the spectator something real, honest, and true. This can be both empowering and paralyzing at once. When we try to act natural, we are usually feeling anything but.

Anin Deetlefs

Western Cape South Africa

Honest

1270H x850Wx10D cm

The skin and facial features are the first thing to be noticed when meeting someone. It forms the first impression. How beautiful to experience how often dear one’s features will change before your eyes as you get to know and love them. Soon you do not see the face, the skin, the body any more. You see the spirit, soul, emotion, shared experiences and always the love. The title of my self-portrait is ‘Honest’ I ponder that old cliché :’The eyes are the windows to the soul’. Within this technological era that we find ourselves in, we can manipulate our image, our ‘first impressions’ of ourselves to the world outside. We are losing our personal touch with one another and so find that we no longer look each other in the eye and make real eye contact . Thus we lose our ability to have deep and meaningful relationships. How much do I reveal to the world about myself and how honest and authentic?

Lorraine Galea

Malta

‘Death is the mother of beauty,’ said Henry, ‘And so, What is beauty?’

Oil on board 21cm x 29.7 cm

Lorraine is interested in humanism and the emotional connection of herself and the people surrounding her, she looks at various philosophers and studies to try and understand where the being has been, and is now. Various media are used in Galea’s work where she observes and engages the subject of the human body in her process whilst trying to capture its unique self. Whilst being interested in the past, she is mostly focused on the present, and since everyday life is in a constant state of flux, the development in Galea’s work is necessarily documented, as whilst her inner self changes, the artwork does as well.

Ileana Rincon

Weston, Florida

Butterflies Effects, We Drown in Plastic

12×18 inches

I’m a fine art photographer. I bare my soul in each of the stories that I generate in my mind, turning them into dreamlike images by using photography as a narrative means. The true essence of my photography is a self-portrait. My photographs are an inverted reality and a reverse of the logic that does not come from my dreams as in surrealism but are born in my imagination. My work is a composite of my experience as an immigrant and how I perceive identity as a cultural and social creation. I develop my photographs to create layers upon layers as if it were a painting, generating an illustrated, utopian environment with timeless abundant symbols that gives my work a unique identity.

Simona

North Macedonia

Social Rules

variable dimensions

daughter, girlfriend, wife, girl, volunteer, visual artist, unemployed, cleaner, babysitter, principal,….

Sally Ann Field

Los Angeles, CA

Flying In , Flying Out

Photography

I have lived my whole life with a famous name and I often wonder how it would feel to be the famous person. Through a series of self-portraits, I channel my inner celebrity. I recreate the iconic moments in the life of the actress Sally Field, but as me… Being Sally Field.

Simphiwe Kaka

Cape Town, South Africa

Qobelo lika Gcaleka

20×20 inches

My work is a compilation of self-portraits which yearns to introspect the journey of an ordinary Xhosa man, examining the current and historical stereotypes which have shaped narratives about what a man must do and shouldn’t do. I specifically paint the subject with a tone of red to illustrate the time after initiation when I had been bathed in earth and lingered in the wilderness in the process of becoming a man. I use that to contrast and forge an identity which looms within the current society and how it would probably be taboo to walk around dressed in contemporary gear while being “red”.

Danilo Novakovic

Podgorica, Montenegro

Portrait

acrylic on paper, 40×50

Secretly peeking into myself was the beginning of my consciousness. Then ‘’secretly’’ grew into something more frequent. The frequent grew into this present moment. I try to present NOW and HERE in the form of portrait. NOW is the expression of all our past and future without looking back at it. It is an image of our breakdown and pain, but also of pleasure and excitement at the same time. It is an image of our consciousness at all times

Ryanne Phillips

Brea, CA

Alpas

The piece that I am submitting is a special piece because it is my first self portrait in a long time. My preference is to be behind the camera instead of in front of it due to preference, but also a lack of confidence. So as a way to gain some self confidence and to change my negative mindset and challenge myself I set out to do a self portrait. The title of piece Alpas translates to “become free, or to break loose.” I chose the name because it represents the mindset of trying to break free my self doubt.

Payam Yasini

Tehran/ Iran

Resolvable

Digital mixed media/ 25×25

I am an Iranian artist who grew up in the revolution and the war, the war with the real enemy and the imaginary enemy. I grew up with my fears and hopes. I grew up with an unknown future, with the hope of a better day, with the hope of friendship with the whole world, a world without war, a world of peace and equality. I am full of fear, anxiety and hope, I am my own works.

Michael Bach

Troy, New York

Obscured standing self portrait behind a deteriorating mirror, Troy, New York, October 2020, Obscured self portrait behind a deteriorating mirror, Troy, New York, November 2020

Archival Pigment Print iPhone digital photographs 9inches x 9 inches

The self portraits I make are reflective of my past and present mental and physical history . in 2000, I was diagnosed with bi polar disorder. That same year, a pituitary disorder was discovered. Both, have have continued to haunt me in untold ways. I use the medium of photography as a coping mechanism as a way to address the disillusionment and confusion my mental and physical health has caused me. It is all consuming!

Katelynn Tracy

Des Moines, Iowa

Feeling Better Now

Acrylic on Canvas. 4’x4’

I am a Queer artist working in Iowa. I often work with themes surrounding the feminine experience and hardships that are too often faced by feminine/female-identifying individuals. My self portrait was produced at a time in my life where I felt a lot of hollowness, which is depicted in the chest cavity and white eyes. The image could be interpreted as a cleansing of pain, or possibly a display of morbid affection.

Juan Manuel Tardivo

Bologna, Italy

Nel Sogno dei miei paesaggi XI

oil on canvas , 50×70 cm

Where I tell the images and colors that I take from some of my dreams in this strange period of isolation and domestic confinement. Starting from the position of a body, the memory of an image or a posture or something that I dreamed of, I begin to recreate it in the canvas, where I portray myself and looking for a way to communicate that idea. The backgrounds are fiery, mellow colors, with weights, textures, spots of dreamlike landscapes that introduce me to a world of my own and the image of the body ends up small in the corner and all this matter descends on it and crushes it or accompanies it depends of the day. The idea of telling these little dreams or little landscapes in which I am immersed is what helps me to bring out all the instability of the four walls, a slow but important process, a story in history, a small one-year autobiography of reflection on what painting is and the relationship with my body.

Oleksandra Malyshko

Dnipro, Ukraine

Kolodivna

40×33 cm.

Past generations, myself and future generations. In one manifestation – I am. The memory of the past has revealed who I am. The portrait shows a girl in the national costume of Ukraine before the holidays. Of course, this is different from the photo, these are my reflections. Finding yourself is an unusual process.

Nouli Omer

Tel Aviv

Self Portrait 2050

“Every artist creates with his personality in all its layers” A.B. Joshua. I am a multidisciplinary artist who creates from a full, free and authentic inner space. I express myself through visual art, writing, acting and music. I am nourished by my impressions of what’s happening around me through time and space.

Kelly Boyle

Leeds, UK

070716

Acrylic and Ink on Wooden Board

A multifaceted shape shifting being that dips in and out of realms and realities.
A flawed human and the watcher, The one who doesn’t judge but holds compassion and awaits with open arms.

Carlos Eguiguren

Chile

Mr. X Y Z

60 x 82 cm

This Portrait was done after reading the bases of Vacant Museum, It represent one of the many mask used by people in different occasions.
I borrowed this body to be able to live in this world, for a period of time. I am only energy hidden inside this body. This body has sensors (Bluetooth) , ears and eyes to process sounds and images, It also has batteries that need to be charged every night. And finally the brain and heart controls our whole body, and stores all our information. Self portrait is for recognition of who you are now. It Works only in present times As past portraits are not any longer valid. Energy is constantly changing.

Lauren Shantall

Cape Town, South Africa

Self-portrait

40 x 50cm

This portrait was painted during the covid-19 lockdown, and after I had lost two uncles and a friend. I hope that it expresses the grief, fear, uncertainty and anxiety that I experienced at that time – an echo of how many were feeling.
I think this painting shows my capacity to experience a range of human emotions, some more intensely than others. Instead of putting on a brave face, I could only paint this face – a more honest, if bare, expression of my mental and emotional state at that moment. The pink colour is also very important here – a colour of healing and a signifier of our ability to work through things towards repair and self-love.

Adeife Adeniran

Lagos, Nigeria

Self Portrait

Oil on canvas, paper , 59cm x 79.5cm

I am introvert with social anxiety and I overthink things a lot. I hardly ever voice my feelings and/or thoughts. Most of my thoughts and feelings are hidden away in my mind like in a “box”.
I am not very popular amongst my peers but one object that made me easily identified in college was a multicoloured striped shirt I owned. As seen in this painting, it was a unique shirt that I had on me through good times and difficult times, through relationships and breakups.
In all, this self portrait represents the person I was through my years of study in college.

Botchy-Botchy

Tokyo, Japan

Portrait of the artist as a wanker

Digital

Who do you think you are? A wanker

Irina Novikova

Minsk, Belarus

Antihero

30х40 cm

When I looked at the sky, on it I saw white and clean dots, distant and unfamiliar .. I did not know what they meant … The dream of an abandoned person … In the end, the offended remains to blame

Renato Saenz

San Jose, Costa Rica

A Façade

Watercolor and Ink on paper, 24 x 34 cm

Who am I today? An idea? What is a portrait anyway? Is a face really that important? In what artificial ways do I construct my image? what lies am I going to tell myself and others about the vision I want to project? Which truths am I hiding? The self portrait is a contradictory adventure in which one travels into inner world by portraying an external image, the result can be a pleasant surprise, unpredictable, eternal.

WAN AHMAD IDHAM ZULFI BIN WAN MOHD ZAILANI

Kelantan, Malaysia

The Adapter

Colored pencils & Collage on paper