Keith Mendak

Artifice is a series of photographic portraits depicting a broad demographic of people wearing or holding a glass mask of my own face to question the perception of self. The portraits developed from my humanist concern for social cohesion. I want to find commonality among a diverse population of people who may identify themselves with very different representations. Clothes and complexion remain as indicators but from behind the mask everyone’s primary feature vanishes. Only the eyes are clear. I continually ask myself, “What will it take to see our own self in another person?” Within this question lies a foundation of moral concern and a basis for the ethical treatment of others regardless of difference. Seeing one’s self in another requires empathy and compassion. A person must be willing to look beyond their immediate self and feel what is not readily perceptible. My face is a mask, my body a shell. My real self is elsewhere, more than the sum of my parts. “I is someone else”, as Arthur Rimbaud was fond of saying. Using the clear glass to copy my persona, I become transparent and indicate the possibility of a self behind the representation as an inherent essence shared by each of us. Once a life is introduced behind the mask, however, the resulting image is complex, contradictory and provocative.

Little People is a series of glass sculptures based on interpretations of the Fisher-Price children’s toys. The iconic figures translate, well, into glass forms and serve as a generic palette to investigate symbols of cultural identity and representation, with the potential for loose narrative.