Am I Pixels?

Conceived in the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, this work emerges as a poetic and critical investigation into the fragmentation of self in the digital age. As screen-mediated relationships increasingly shape our daily lives, boundaries between the real and the virtual begin to dissolve — and with them, the integrity of self-perception. The repetition of the artist’s own face becomes both motif and mirror: a commentary on the narcissism that permeates contemporary interaction. In the artificial intimacy of video calls, we often find ourselves speaking more to our own image than to the other. The curated digital backdrops — forests, bookshelves, idealized domesticity — serve as ironic emblems of our desire for authenticity in a space defined by artifice. Much like Gerhard Richter’s blurred self-portraits, the defocused image here resists the hyper-reality of digital screens, where every detail is sharpened, every imperfection exposed in high definition. Blurring becomes a gesture of resistance — an intentional refusal to submit to the gaze of the algorithm. The grotesque, digitally simulated “plastic surgery” acts as a visual rupture, a critical response to the pervasive pressure for beauty and youth imposed by contemporary society. It points to the subtle yet profound distortions these ideals can imprint on our self-esteem, especially within the closed loop of self-surveillance and online validation. The soundscape, intentionally abrasive, evokes the harsh machinery of an industrial factory — a sonic metaphor for how human identities are processed, commodified, and repackaged in the social media environment. In this space, the individual risks becoming just another product in a system of relentless exposure and aesthetic conformity. This is a self in search of itself, navigating a landscape where presence is performative and intimacy is pixelated. In confronting the screen, the artist questions not only who is being seen, but whether we are truly seeing ourselves at all.