Tahlia Gray, Effigy (Student)

This work is an exploration of my personal struggles with mental illness and self-harm--something I have been battling with since the age of 12. In this series I have instead turned my attacks to my self-portraits. Each mark is meant as an act of violence that has been redirected towards an effigy of myself. The choice to use low quality images printed on cheap office paper is my attempt to evoke a sense of detachment and emotional distance. When I am in a period of mental distress, my reaction is very dissociative, nothing feels real or important, like no matter what I do to myself, the result will be inconsequential. In my perception the world seems more like cheap, low quality copy of something that might have existed at one time. My face is either hidden or destroyed in the images as a reflection of my loss of self-identity at these times. The making of these images was a way to direct the violence that I inflict upon myself to something else, a process of catharsis without the long-term physical side effects.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.