SHARKFORUM: OPINION WITH TEETH

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This work is a reinterpretation of standard portraits that I have taken of my mother. The original countenance, despite being drastically affected by the image’s composition, continues to shine through as one of happiness and peace. This work is a meditation on the meaning behind that smile. Projections are thrown against a fleshy surface to give the illusion that only fragments of the face remain; the face is, in effect, torn apart and reassembled.

This work acts as a therapeutic exercise for my own emotional and personal issues with my mother. These photos seem to imply an emptiness expressing a sense of what the role or duties of being mother may have become for me.

In a broader sense, it is a view of the conflict between traditional family identities and structures deeply inherent in my Polish heritage and my own contemporary views.