Install and Artist Statement

Self

Lauren Simons, 2025

Self is a body of work that addresses the effort required to present and maintain a socially legible self. This exhibition consists of drawn and painted self-portraiture, developed from an archive of staged reference photographs depicting an idealised version of myself. Through the process of layering sections of the photographs together, these works explore the construction of new identities.

Additionally, the drawings utilise a deliberate act of cutting as a mechanism of rupture—a symbolic disintegration of the constructed self. For me, this severing marks a breakdown of coherence, while simultaneously opening up space for reinvention and the emergence of new layers.

These processes speak directly to the neurodivergent experience of masking, where identity is continuously dismantled and reinvented in response to external cues and expectations, revealing the ongoing, often invisible labour of self-presentation.

Painting I

Acrylic paint and chalk pastel on canvas

760mm x 760mm

Painting II

Acrylic paint on canvas

760mm x 760mm

Series of Drawings

Chalk pastel and coloured pencil on paper

210mm x 150mm