Subject: Self was developed as a response to an ongoing curatorial investigation into self-representation in contemporary figurative practice. The series examines the psychological impact of repeated self-observation, positioning the artist as both subject and documentarian.

Through daily portrait studies in watercolour and charcoal, the work functions as a sustained act of surveillance, a visual record produced through repetition. Early pieces operate as emotional temperature readings: raw, immediate, and unstable. As the series progresses, the imagery becomes increasingly constructed. Hooded figures emerge as controlled, almost iconographic forms, shifting the work from introspective study toward mediated identity.

A large-scale ink portrait reduces the self to stark graphic language, echoing the aesthetics of authority and propaganda. Here, the individual becomes symbol, flattened, monumentalised, and publicly consumable.

The project moves between vulnerability and control, asking: what remains authentic when identity is repeatedly performed, examined, and externalised?