It was only when examining all the pieces of my life, did I finally understand who I am. I am not a failure; I am not a mistake. I was designed and put on earth with a purpose that only I can fulfill. I’m uniquely me, but it was only after learning who I am not, that I began discovering who I really am created to be. Disguised as perfectionism, I had formed a destructive habit of sacrificing myself, health, and livelihood for the purpose of fitting in certain “standards” I had learned growing up. While I haven’t thrown away all these standards, I had to sift through what is and isn’t true.
Sincerely, Me is about my journey in uncovering who I really am through the process of deconstructing religious ideologies that had shaped me from birth to adulthood. At the beginning of this project, which was inspired by the two films, the Perfect Human and the Five Obstructions, I endeavored to examine my life as it stands. Surrounded by clutter— both mental and physical— and tormented by shame, through multiple mediums, I began to capture and describe things I experience daily. My work is primarily a collection of experiments which consists of self-portraits, everyday snapshots, installations, creative writing, and more. Through each medium, I depict different aspects of my daily experiences which range from dealing with depression, shame, and navigating life with ADD.
As an adult, I had to learn that I am not my mistakes or shortcomings. Just because I make a mistake or can’t do something, doesn’t mean that I’m broken—it just means I can’t do it. My mistakes, though they have shaped me, they do not define who I am. Through this project, through research, through community, through therapy, I discovered that the very same messes I made, gave testament to my true identity as human being—as me.
Specimen #20 - 2021, Digital Composite