Saskia Marks
Folding Faces
Prompt: To make a piece that incorporates images with text from Seminar, using 8x 18” x 24” sheets of paper, (or the equivalent amount of space in another material) based on information, conversation and observation of your in-class partner. The piece should, in some way, be a portrait or your partner and a self-portrait and must be in grayscale (black, white, grays – not color).'
The viewer is taken on a journey – their eye ‘starts’ off with our whole untouched faces, but with each fold, they observe an attribute suddenly extracted, eventually ‘terminating’ with a composition merely consisting of all of these extractions – what we are seen, remembered and perhaps associated with. In terms of this concertina-like design, it not only adds this undulating surge of dynamism, but almost causes the viewer to interact with the work, as they squat down or come up close to observe the text or spot the missing features. Essentially, this work questions what happens when we take away what makes ‘us’ us. What are we left with? Whilst only remnants of external ‘us’ are seen by the ‘end’ of this design, suddenly the texts (taken from our seminar essays) are more visible – we can now perceive and perhaps acknowledge what makes ‘us’ internally. Therefore, perhaps this work’s narrative also has a transient nature – considering how our external appearances can so easily not only physically change as well as fade over time, but change with each perspective, person to person – and yet, our internal voices linger throughout (both in life, but specifically here exemplified through the text), only recognised and appreciated by those who make the effort to notice.