Self-portrait

About

Unlike the portrait, self-portraiture is a genre in its own right that distinguishes and characterises a particular subject, namely the artist. It is the image of an exceptional personality, of a subjectivity one feels is unique and incomparable: a man (to paraphrase Petrarch) who makes his own image into a reflection of what he embodies at a certain point in history. Born in the Italian Renaissance—at the same time as the portrait and the autonomous status of art and the artiste—, self-portraiture was a new space in which the artist could express himself. Through it the artist could proclaim his existence and seek, like the mirror image of Narcissus, the unique presence that inhabited him and the artistic status he needed.
Self-representation now serves a more general meaning and questions of greater current relevance, be they political, social, ideological or ecological. Depersonalisations that seem to shy away from the subject are in fact a way of better understanding the world’s incipient disorders. Having once tended to idealise, glorify or conquer the subject, contemporary self-portraiture escapes from traditional systems of representation in order to explore the underbelly of humanity: this, indeed, is the approach behind the exhibition Shelf-portrait at Salle Principale. Self-representation now adopts a form that is not fixed but constantly changing and in motion. If we no longer physically recognise the artist in their self-portrait, we understand their positions, their engagement, their perspective on the meaning of life (or its meaninglessness) and their need for freedom: it is a militant act more than a representation.
Corinne Szabo_february 2022 (extract)