Pink Cig // 2023 🚬👤🎭 [and the importance of self portraiture] - This is Pink Cig, a self-portrait. It is a constructed moment frozen in time, a character born from an early exploration into the self, identity, and the performance of masking. Its composition is a mix of denim, face paint, and the quiet rebellion of a lit cigarette, all framed within the space between a playground and a street. It is a portrait not of a singular truth, but of the fluid and multiple identities we can build and inhabit. - But Pink Cig is more than just a character study; it is a question. It personifies the ambiguous line between the person and the persona, inspired by the transformative work of Cindy Sherman and the queer dynamism of Peter Hujar. Self-portraiture, in this vein, becomes the critical medium—a mirror and a stage where the artist has complete agency to construct and deconstruct the self. It confronts the moment of transformation itself: the Warholian symbolism of denim, the clownish maski...