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| Self Portrait in Clothing, 2018 |
A form of self invention I am personally familiar with is that which is done through clothing. I spent a lot of time in high school cultivating an image for myself through the clothes I chose to wear. Everything I chose was for the purpose of communicating who I was to others. I tried my best to be true to myself in this, not creating a false image of myself, rather choosing clothes that expressed my interests or clothes that I liked. There was a large element of looking "cool" but I would not feel that I looked cool if I was wearing something I did not like. Thus, my clothing did its job of expressing who I was. At the same time, I built upon myself with inspiration from who I wanted to be but was not. For example, when I was fifteen I was obsessed with Led Zeppelin and wanted to be like Jimmy Page, so I would dress like him and cut my hair like his, and this ended up becoming a large part of my identity. Though I don't aspire to be like him anymore, I still use his style as an inspiration and have even earned the nickname "Jimmy" from my friends and family. Because appearance and clothing have been so influential to me in inventing myself, I made them the subject of this week's selfie assignment. I took inspiration from Tamara Gubernat's use of personal items in her piece "In My Backyard". I used my own clothing to create the shape of a person. I layered several different pieces over one another to represent the different ways I may present myself, since there is no one outfit or article of clothing that completely represents me.
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