The Performative Self-Portrait

By Suzanne Révy

While performing my ritual morning and evening ablutions, I am accorded a disconcerting number of opportunities to scrutinize my face and neck. Occasionally, I find myself wondering at the ways my appearance has changed over time and the ways my experiences and emotions may manifest themselves in my face and body. Such contemplations about my own growth and mortality have prompted me sporadically to make a self-portrait. And indeed, the search for the evolving self has motivated artists and photographers to turn to themselves as subject matter throughout the centuries. The RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island has brought together a selection of provocative photographic self-portraits in The Performative Self-Portrait on view through November 12th, 2023. 

“Brothers (Slaughter 1)” by Yasumasa Morimura, 1991, three silver dye bleach prints mounted panels with artist frame. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)

Assembled by Connor Moynihan, Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, the exhibition offers several recent acquisitions alongside works that date back to the 1930’s. It celebrates the myriad ways artists have asserted their own identities. Some toy with history, others play dress-up while still more delve into the politics of their skin color or gender. The exhibit opens with Yasumasa Morimura’s massive nod to Francisco Goya in a recreation of the 1818 painting The Third of May, 1808. Morimura has digitally inserted his face onto all of the figures in Goya’s painting, visually bridging western and eastern cultures and disrupting ideas about the canon of western art history. 

“Untitled (Homage to Claude Cahun)” by Cindy Sherman, 1975, printed 2004, chromogenic print, courtesy of the artist and the RISD Museum, Providence, RI.

“Aveux non avenus (Disavowed Confessions)” by Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, 1930, illustrated book with 11 collotypes. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)

“Hands Out Self-Portrait” by John Kelly, 2016, inkjet print on paper, courtesy of the artist and the RISD Museum, Providence, RI.

Cindy Sherman channels her inner Claude Cahun in a tightly composed portrait that revisits formal modernism, celebrating Cahun’s legacy and her contributions to early 20th century style. The museum smartly pairs Sherman’s portrait with a Cahun collaged self-portrait installed in a vitrine below. Also referencing another artist, John Kelly’s sinewy arms and dramatic make-up are a suggestive reprise of the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele, whose raw depictions of the figure are psychologically charged. The muted color and intimate print size create a mesmerizing picture. 

“Untitled (Psychosocial Stuntin’) by Juliana Huxtable, 2015, from the Universal Crop Tops for All the Self-Canonized Saints of Becoming, color inkjet print, courtesy of the artist and the RISD Museum, Providence, RI.

“Birth in Futureverse” by David Benjamin Sherry, 2009, from the series Futureverse, color chromogenic print, courtesy of the artist and RISD Museum, Providence, RI.

Several artists costume themselves or adorn their bodies to mine ideas around the fictions we may create or the histories we wish to understand around identity. Juliana Huxtable is an intersex artist employing poetry, music, performance and photography in a practice that questions the narrow boundaries of gender and race. In a colorful continuum of character, she gazes past the camera from a surreal landscape, dressed in fatigues and cream colored combat boots with purple painted skin in an act she calls “photo-stuntin.” David Benjamin Sherry painted dots on his skin and turns from the camera, recalling an album cover from the 80’s British band The Smiths. Using the male figure and heightened saturated color, Sherry reconsiders a classic pose and endows it with his own Queer identity. 

“Large Studio 10-6-86″” by John O’Reilly, 1986, polaroid photomontages, courtesy RISD Museum, Providence, RI.

The hand of a photographer is often invisible, and it took me a few minutes to see the nude figure of John O’Reilly in a mirror among an extraordinary collage that basks in his collection of ephemera and visual prompts. Likewise, it is almost impossible to find the photographer’s reflection in a store window in a color image by Harry Callahan, an illustrious educator at RISD. 

(Feature Image) “The Road Back: Self-Portrait II” by Susan Markisz 1993, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the artist and RISD Museum, Providence, RI.

“Self-Portrait, Reaching” by Jess T. Dugan, 2020, from the series Every Breath We Drew, color inkjet print, courtesy of the artist and RISD Museum, Providence, RI.

LEFT: “12 Lauras” 1993 by Laura Aguilar (1959-2018) gelatin silver prints; RIGHT: “Space (to the power of 2)” 1976 & “Space (to the power of 2)” 1976, posthumously printed in 2014 and “Untitled” 1977 posthumously printed in 2011 by Francesca Woodman (1958-1981), gelatin silver prints; installation view of The Performative Self-Portrait on view through November 12th, 2023, courtesy of the RISD Museum, Providence, RI.

Perhaps most poignant among these self-portraits are those where the photographer is coming to terms with their perceived flaws, physical wounds or threatening diseases and finding comfort within their own bodies. Laura Aguilar was angry about her weight, and hoped to assuage her sense of discomfort by looking at her body through photographs. Presented in a grid of twelve black and white prints, Aguilar’s pictures rattled audiences in the early 90’s for their frankness. Photojournalist Susan Markisz’s breast cancer diagnosis prompted a documentary self-portrait project in defiance of the disease. Jess T. Dugan’s meditative expression in two portraits, one clothed in black the other shirtless and revealing the scars from their transition surgery, show the artist at ease in their own skin. In many ways, we might think of self-portraiture as nothing but navel gazing, but this show deftly declares a broad range of expressive possibilities that move beyond the merely personal to engage with— or against— the social archetypes in our culture. 

For more information: https://risdmuseum.org/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/performative-self-portrait

“Self-Portrait” by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1980, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the RISD Museum, Providence, RI.