Identity is what makes someone who they are; what separates them from society and others. My initial inspiration for this prompt was Multiple Personality Disorder. I examined the possibility of having more than one, conflicting identities within oneself that would all present themselves at different times. Having all of those personalities in one image was my original plan, but after doing more research I decided against that idea. Instead, I chose to have all of one person's self-identifications be in one image. 

 

Many have a concrete sense of self identification, while others struggle with the views of friends, family, or complete strangers. In my artwork, the girl identifies as an artist, an athlete, and a nutritionist. My artwork depicts the same girl with three different and distinct factors to her identity that are all conflicting. Despite the vast differences, she wants to allow them all to be apart of her life at the same time, but one is pushed to the back of her life, as well as the back of the picture. The athlete portion of herself is repressed due to the majority of herself being dedicated to the humanities.

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The subject is wearing white and standing in front of a white wall to showcase how she is nothing without the objects she uses to define herself. The subject chose her own props that would best reflect her actual identity and make the composition more personal. I positioned the subject into three different compositions, holding each prop in a natural-looking way. However, when the subject was holding the running shoes, she had a much lighter grip on the prop to represent how it is often disregarded that she also is an athlete.

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This work is representative of the struggle to combine all facets of someone’s identity into one, singular self definition, without erasing any important pieces. All of one’s hobbies, activities, and pastimes are equally important in summation to an identity.