Artist Statement 

 

                By: Jose Cordovez                                  

 

   The Death of “Me” 

 

   I grew up with riches in the form of family support to express myself freely. Looking through my family’s photo album I found images that reminded me of who I was, and perhaps who I was expected to become. I found photos of my mother and aunt which made me realize how much I admired their beauty and style. They became role models, and their feminine beauty offered a juxtaposition to my nickname, “Macho”.  Looking at my baby photos, I felt like that child had died -- the death of “me”.  That saying, “the death of me” implies something that is so hard to bear, it can kill you.  But, in my art I’m finding a new self, one that feels more authentic. So the title of my thesis show has a double meaning.  

 

In the portrait I recently shot of my aunt looking at herself in the mirror, I noticed that she had tucked photos from our family album into the mirror’s frame. This is a typical way that people display photos of their loved ones. It’s very different from the more objective way photos are shown in a “white cube” art gallery.  In class we discussed the work of the artist Ken Lum, who did a show of photos displayed this way, and I thought this more intimate display mode also made sense for my thesis show. I wanted to emphasize the difference between the family snapshots, which also serve primarily to commemorate family events, and in the process reaffirm the existence of my family. This practice in comparison to my self-portrait photos try to examine deeper levels of what those family albums reveal. The mirrors also have another significance for my project.  The French Psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, discusses the mirror phase in a baby’s development.  It describes the moment when an infant differentiates its own body from that of its mother.  For the first time, it sees themselves in the mirror, recognizing that it's a separate entity. For me, as for all children, it's the inevitable journey to self discovery. I believe that the mirror stage is not just a passing phase of human psychological development, but also a model for the relationship between the "I" and the image of ourselves. We can all look into mirrors and consider this ideology in our own experience.