Our multi-layered Self: the outer skin

#3

“Super Buddahead” by Roger Shimomura (see narrative below)

What others think of us, our public persona, is an important part of our sense of self. In this age of endless selfies, Instagram and other social media, we are all hyper-aware of our need to project an image we want our friends and family to believe in. We hope we are close to, or at least striving to be, the image we project in our online / offline persona and our numerous selfies.

Here is an online collection of unusual 'selfies'. The collection is called: Eye to I: Self-portraits from 1900 to today . It features sixty self-portraits by American artists over two centuries. It is an amazing collection, I urge you go through it, come back to it whenever you have a little time on your hands.

Artists are masters of their medium. They let us see what they want us to see and yet appear genuine. Let's look at a couple of selfies from the Eye to I exhibition.

Ralph Barton was a very successful caricaturist in the roaring twenties. Here’s a typical example of his work: a caricature of Alla Nazimova, a famous theater and screen actress of that era.

It's obviously well-drawn, shows us a self-assured, haughty, exotic beauty. Though it captures her aloofness well, the caricature isn't particularly deep in meaning. Very much like a modern day glamorous celebrity portrait on Instagram:

Deepika Padukone: a Bollywood megastar.

Now take a look at Ralph Barton's selfie. The difference in the two portraits is striking. Very rarely does anyone bare their soul as Barton did here.

His huge despairing eyes, his sunken cheeks, almost offensive crimson lips pursed tight, gaunt skeletal face. Reflecting all the pain he accumulated during his lifetime. Barton was plagued by depression and took his own life when he was thirty nine years old. He ended his suffering by the only escape hatch he could find.

The next selfie is by Roger Shimomura, a Japanese-American artist. It captures the lifelong conflict between his two identities. His family was forced to move to a concentration camp for Japanese-Americans in Idaho during the second world-war.

To be clear, there was no attempt at systematic atrocity in these camps. But, Japanese-Americans were uprooted from their lives and concentrated within a small area with a fence around it. The millions of Americans who had German or Italian ancestry were not subject to this treatment during the second world war.

This historic stain on the nations character became an indelible part of Shimomura's identity and is reflected in his work. In the self-portrait titled Super Buddahead, he is asking: "Does Superman have to be Caucasian to be truly Superman?"

This is a daydream every kid has. How many of you have never dreamed of becoming Superman or Superwoman? Shimomura is asking: aren't Japanese-American kids allowed to even dream of becoming Superman?

The Eye to I exhibit has more selfies from Shimomura and other immigrants. They illustrate the universal internal conflict of the immigrant or person of color. Always torn between two cultures. Forbidden to dream certain dreams. This internal conflict becomes a source of suffering that rarely fades. An integral part of their shared sense of self.

Each one of these sixty selfies has a unique hidden layer. You might spend hours contemplating the various facets of their selves each artist has chosen to project.

What is the source of Barton’s or Shimomura’s suffering? It’s a side-effect of the human mind’s ability to travel in time.

Our minds travel to places and moments of human connection or callousness that are only in our brains. The ability to fully experience a past or future moment in all its vividness. Its sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, pains, pleasures, regrets. We can transport our consciousness to places and episodes that don’t exist, except in our memories of the past and our dreams of the future.

Close your eyes for a minute and dig into your own memories to identify such a special moment. Perhaps a smell, a sight, a piece of music that transports you back to a place or past event.

Cognitive scientists refer to this as our autobiographical self. The memories and dreams that are a large part of this autobiographical self are physically encoded in our brains (ref.1). The autobiographical self plays a useful role in helping achieve the legitimate biological goals of every organism.

Yet, it became the root of Barton and Shimomura’s suffering. This is why meditators are exhorted to stay in the present. Forget the past, don’t dwell on the future, stay in the present moment. It is the only thing in your control and can be your ticket out of suffering.

But then, where would Art be?

Reference

1. Memory engrams: Recalling the past and imagining the future Josselyn & Tonegawa, Science, Jan 2020

PS: Don’t miss downloading the Google Arts and Culture app on your mobile. It lets you explore the Eye to I exhibit by projecting the artwork on to your own wall using AR, take virtual tours of museums and much more.