Edited by : Radhika Gupta
As I sat down in front of the crisp blank canvas with the plethora of paints and my French beret I couldn’t help but experience the burning lack of creativity in my brain. I knew how I looked, I’d stared at myself in the mirror for a while just this morning, why couldn’t I then paint a picture of myself? It was then that it hit me, the reflection I see of myself changes everytime I look at it, however this is more permanent, this will not change the next time I look at it. Therefore, it had to be more than just a likeness or a reflection, something more constant, more real?
I started by asking myself, what is it that I believe to be the most stable element of the self? The most obvious one was that of self identity aka who the hell am I. Well the funny thing is even I don’t know that and the more I venture into the rabbit hole of that question I begin to realize how increasingly fragmented the whole concept of the self is. While I try to encapsulate my “unique” self I am unknowingly (somewhat unwillingly) pushed into this process of extrospection. It’s like I cannot see myself in my authenticity without seeing myself as a reflection of the perception that others around me hold of me. And while that as a concept is extremely problematic, what is even more frustrating is that there is no “one way” in which these others look at me. This externalized aspect of self, driven by the perceptions of those around me, led me into a realm of introspection I hadn’t anticipated. This borderline identity crisis became the starting point for my self-portrait journey.
The initial aspect that came to mind when contemplating my self-identity was the value I held in people’s lives. Do those around me admire me? Do my parents take pride in me? Am I held in high regard by my friends? While there isn’t a way to figure out answers to these questions, I couldn’t help but wonder about the enormous impact this has on me.
Imagine a scenario where I performed poorly in school, failed to secure a place in a good college, and, to make things more challenging, made no effort to improve my circumstances. Would these people around me still hold me with the same amount of significance, would I still receive the same amount of warmth and love from them and would I still hold the same amount of value for them? This train of thought led me to question why my material success was the first thing that crossed my mind when pondering my “value” in others’ lives and why “value” was the first thing that I thought of when contemplating my identity.
It was then that I spiraled into the enigma of whether my self concept or self worth would be hampered if I had not lived up to my own expectations and if that is why I attach the value people hold for me over my achievements because it is the way that I attach value to myself. See what I mean by “problematic extrospection?”
While I considered the possibility that my entire self worth is based on my material achievements I couldn’t help but wonder a deeper meaning to the way I view myself. Whether subconsciously or unconsciously I reflect myself onto the world instead of it just reflecting itself onto me. The value people hold of me influences my identity, thus I can say that people’s perception of me leads to the creation of my self image. However, this analysis cannot exist without the very evident assumption which is that while I look at myself through the mirror of the “other,” I am still the one perceiving myself and thus this concept of self identity, while very obviously extrospective, is clearly equally introspective.
In essence, our self identity acts as the most constant element of our existence while being present in a seemingly fluid state. So while I sat there with my paintbrush ready to paint down this perfect image of myself encapsulating the idea of my self identity, I couldn’t stop myself from getting lost into the multiplicity and the complications of the concept itself which summarized so beautifully the sheer state of constant confusion that I hold synonymous to my being, and that right there was my catharsis. It is thus that in the end, I painted a horse because, Picasso :)