Self portrait (2025)
Photography, archival pigment print, ash frame, Uv92
25 x 19 cm

Shown at the group exhibition ULTRA during the biennial Gibca Extended with works from Alqumid Alhamad, Camilla Lohmann, Fia-Lo doepel, Hanna Katri Eskelinen, Joey Bravo, Leio Mandaric, Meii Soh and Mika Lovsen.

Self portrait is a photographic work consisting of six passport sized images of my little pet shop toy mice, mounted in a grid. These small plastic figures are ambiguous in age, gender, morality and origin embodying a form that resists a stable identity. Their exaggerated cuteness, mass produced sameness and emotional affect carry a row of different dichotomies: Masculine/ Feminine, Knowing/naive and familiar/unfamiliar which disrupts conventional systems of categorisation.

The passport, in its standardised and authoritative format is seen as a document of truth. It operates on the presumption that identity is fixed, easily identifiable and photographable. As well as something confirmable through visual and cultural codes tied to gender, age, nationality and social legibility. It is a format designed not only to identity, but also to regulate.

By substituting the human subject with toy surrogates, self portrait disrupts the visual logic of identification. It draws attention to the systems of surveillance, conformity and state control that taint the passport format. Rather than offering clarity, the work embraces deliberate misrecognition. Proposing a selfhood that refuses the visual codes of power. In doing so the work gestures towards a queerer mode of visibility: One grounded not in legibility or recognition, but in the right to remain undefined.