Look at Me: Self-Portrait Photography after Cindy Sherman
Nikki S. Lee
➜ Projects (1997-2000) :
⬥ Rather than individual identity and psychology, their work engages ideas about
class identity, cultural groups, and social interaction.
● The meanings behind their work depend on the cooperation of other people and the context of other faces in their photographs,
⬥ approaches various social groups, befriends them, and enlists their cooperation and collaboration in physically transforming herself into a member of each.
● Subjects appear to be willing collaborators, if not on an equal level with the artist, possessing an understanding of what's really going on
⬥ visually blends into divergent subcultures, pointing up the constructed nature of identity
● argues that even the subcultures one is apparently born into, such as ethnic groups, are more socially fluid and self-subscribing than conventionally believed.
⬥ "Where's Waldo?" effect
● debate over assimilation and "passing."
usually describe the process by which immigrants and members of other
marginalized groups strive to enter mainstream culture
● Lee assimilates into both mainstream and marginal cultures with zeal and success, highlighting both the intricate visual markings and broader social functions of our cultural boundaries
⬥ Photographs
● documentations of performances-proof that something happened.
● conceptualists - use photography to illustrate their ideas about social identity.
⬥ Performative aspect - look beyond the surface markings that define us to one another and keep us separated
⬥ Lee's photographs are obviously snapshots, complete with time/date stamp.
● enlarged to "art size,"
⚬ retain the attendant strengths (a candid, documentary feel)
⚬ weaknesses (occasionally flat, banal compositions) that snapshots connote.
Dalton, J. (2000). ‘Look at Me: Self-Portrait Photography after Cindy Sherman’, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 22(3), 47-56. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3247840.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Af85b8bbea8b72f85a6985c8347b74677
Between Selves and Others Exploring Strategic Approaches within Visual Art
Visual art
questions culturally constructed meanings of difference and
reveals the cultural and historical processes and experiences involved in viewing and understanding art.
Otherness
Humanities and Fine arts
explore themes of Otherness and the relationship between the Self and the Other.
“The Spectacle of the ‘Other” — Stuart Hall
“difference” determines how we perceive and relate to other people and things.
binary oppositions (such as the difference between “day” and “night) in linguistics create meanings in language. (Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistic argument)
“we need ‘difference’ because we can only construct meaning through a dialogue with the ‘Other’” (Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism)
Through interaction with others ➜ make sense of what things mean in relationship to our environment and ourselves.
Hall’s third argument, anthropology : each culture assigns meaning by defining principles of classification. (Mary Douglas, Emile Durkheim and Claude Lévi-Strauss)
binary oppositions are also significant “because one must establish a clear difference between things in order to classify them” (235).
Differences of psychoanalytic and contends are crucial in the formation of subjectivities and identities: (Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan)
“Subjectivity can only arise and a sense of ‘self’ be formed through the symbolic and unconscious relations which the young child forges with a significant ‘Other’ which is outside – i.e. different from – itself”
Simone de Beauvoir
common way to understand the Self is through interactions with others
Self and Other
notions surrounding ‘identity’.
Hall - identities are “fragmented and fractured; never singular but multiply constructed... subject to a radical historicization, and are constantly in the process of change and transformation”
Linda Martin Alcoff - Visible Identities
“The reality of identities often comes from the fact that they are visibly marked on the body itself, guiding if not determining the way we perceive and judge others and are perceived and judged by them”
two aspects of the Self: “public identity” and “lived subjectivity”
“Public identity” is our socially perceived Self within the systems of perception and classification and the networks of community in which we live”
“Lived subjectivity” is “who we understand ourselves to be, how we experience being ourselves, and the range of reflective and other activities that can be included under the rubric of our ‘agency’” (emphasis in original).
Identities ➜ the relationships between perceived identifications from external influences, and our own sense of Self or inner subjectivity.
cautions against the “interior/exterior” terminology of the Self
implies that these two aspects are distinct entities instead of “mutually constitutive”
many constructions of identity can be “overly homogenizing, essentialist, reductive, or simplistic”.
Bertolt Brecht
Griselda Pollock : feminist artists follow Bertolt Brecht by employing
“disidentificatory practices” / “distanciation” strategies to
“liberate the viewer from the state of being captured by illusions of art which encourages passive identification with fictional worlds” (“Screening the Seventies” 82).
Her strategies are aimed at distancing or estranging the viewer from identifying with mainstream ideological expectations (e.g. the hero in a film, etc.) by not incorporating basic codes and conventions
Further Brechtian notions that she defines as “scripto-visual” such as collage and montage that combine or juxtapose disparate elements could also inspire new ways of making art
Nikki S. Lee’s Projects (1997-2001)
Performative gender theory — Judith Butler
Concept that gender identity is performative and not connected to a biological core essence has allowed for new interpretations and possible strategies that could unsettle conventional beliefs about identities, gender and otherwise
Lee : reveals the constructed nature of representations of the Other
because she can be identified in each project both as herself and as a member of a different subgroup.
‘Passing’ or ‘racial passing’
people who were classified as “Black” passed for or were accepted as ‘White’ in order to avoid persecution or oppression.
Performative Passing
fluid transformations of social and cultural identities challenge the viewer’s assumptions about the Self and the Other,
document her simultaneously as a ‘member’ as well as an outsider.
Reveal the viewer’s unconscious assumptions about race, ethnicity, class or gender in her appropriation of cultural stereotypes;
These stereotypes are not only undermined, they are reinforced
Lee is perceived as a ‘member’ of groups - performing the role as one of ‘them’
seen as part of this legacy of ‘passing’ performances in art
Demonstrated how identity is connected to performance and representation.
By crossing culturally constructed borders of identification, they are also revealed as permeable.
Use of visual stereotypes to depict diverse groups and ethnicities.
Russell Ferguson - “Let’s Be Nikki” that
Lee “makes use of certain common stereotypes. Her various identities, although they are quite specific, are at the same time dependent on the recognizability of particular sub-cultures. The visual markers of the stereotype are the means by which each successive photograph is quickly identified as part of its respective series”
Stereotyping
Cultural stereotypes are used by dominant groups in order to classify and exclude what they view as the Other.
supports this naturalization process by:
Naturalizing link between racial signifier & other attribute ➜ racial/ cultural difference = ‘fixed’
selecting, exaggerating, and simplifying certain traits and reducing a person or group to these characteristics.
Dependent on the viewer’s cultural knowledge about diverse subculture groups or ethnicities.
“rather than disturbing or complicating the voyeuristic desire and primitivist expectations that fuel ethnography and tourism, Lee fulfils them by objectifying herself, collapsing herself into the other as an other, serving happily as a ‘native’ tour guide”
Lee’s Intentions?
“I don’t think about race or nationality. … I don’t need to bring up that issue because other people will.”
“I always feel like I have a lot of different characters inside and I was curious to understand these things. I wanted to see some sort of evidence that I could be all those different things. … Other people make me a certain kind of person. It’s about inner relationship and how those really address the idea of identity.”
Conclusion.
Identity ↶ representation
Lee’s Projects series uses the literary devices of juxtaposition and irony
By juxtaposing images of herself as a member of diverse subcultures
viewer can compare and contrast the different visual identities of Lee - she cannot be a member of all the groups
“Where’s Waldo’ anamorphic situation ➜
the viewer is encouraged to actively search for the artist in all of the pictures.
recognize Lee in all the diverse ‘ethnic minority’ and communities
identification borders are revealed to be permeable.
offer alternative perspectives about the cultural connotations of a racially marked body
reveal how culture and context influence and affect the meanings of representations of race and gender.
Not only is all art dependent on the subjective experiences, perspectives, and historical conditions of the artist, but also critical interrogation of these identity-related issues are still essential for modern society.
Chen, T. (2014) ‘Between Selves and Others Exploring Strategic Approaches within Visual Art’, Plymouth University, July. Available at: http://www.teresachen.ch/Downloads/TChen_Diss.pdf
Other References:
Park, H. (2014) ‘Performance Art as Mirroring Identities: As Examination of Nikki S. Lee's Projects (1997-2001)’, OCAD University, Available at: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/54849594.pdf
Mckinney, M. R. (2006) ‘How Do I Look: Identity And Photography In The Work of Nikki S. Lee ‘, Available at: https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/mckinney_matthew_200612_ma.pdf
Lyon, D. (2002). NIKKI S. LEE: PROJECTS. Aperture, (167), 6-8. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24473136.pdf?ab_segments=0%252Fbasic_SYC-4802%252Ftest2&refreqid=excelsior%3Af42e6af4eef66b1323acad1400a4266e&seq=1
Kim, E. (2016) ‘Nikki S. Lee’s “Projects”—And the Ongoing Circulation of Blackface, Brownface in “Art”’, Contemptorary, May 30. Available at: https://contemptorary.org/nikki-s-lees-projects-and-the-ongoing-circulation-of-blackface-brownface-in-art/