Editing Yourself #91

2023

Augmented reality/Recycled plastic

This object is a meditation on the multi-layered nature of modern identity, where a plastic mask shaped like an ancient Greek Venus serves as the starting point for exploring the connection between cultural heritage and the digital age. The lighting, styled like a ring selfie lamp, immediately evokes contemporary rituals of self-presentation, while the holographic film—a symbol of the bygone era of CDs—serves as a reminder of physical storage media that once held information but have now yielded to cloud technologies.

Augmented reality adds another conceptual layer: the artist’s self-portrait, transferred into virtual space through 3D scanning, invites the viewer to reflect on how our 'self' is shaped by cultural codes and digital filters. Like ancient Greek statues, which were originally brightly painted but reached us as white marble, our identity undergoes countless transformations—from classical ideals to modern Instagram masks.

The physical object, made of recycled plastic, becomes a metaphor for contemporary culture, where materiality and virtuality intertwine, and augmented reality acts as a bridge between them. By interacting with the AR self-portrait, the viewer becomes part of an 'editing' process—not just of the image, but of their own perception. The project raises a question: What remains of the authentic 'self' when each layer—be it cultural clichés or digital filters—is superimposed on the previous one, like paint on an ancient statue? The answer may lie in the very act of interaction, where the viewer becomes a co-author of this eternal process of self-construction.