gillian wearing    Creating both photographic works and video installations, Wearing explores the disturbing, amusing, and volatile in human behavior and everyday life. She is intrigued and inspired by the formats of television documentaries and confession-type reality programs, and this fascination plays out in her creations. Some of her works focus on more mundane confessions while others show people pushed to their emotional limits. While Wearing uses photography and video to explore common human behavior and our relationships with others, she inevitably forces us to examine our relationship with ourself. Born in Birmingham, England, in 1963, Gillian Wearing is often considered part of the artists known as the YBAs, or "Young British Artists," whose style is typically identified as sensational. She studied at the Chelsea School of Art, received her fine arts degree from Goldsmiths College, and has since received international acclaim for her frankly provocative pieces. Gillian Wearing lives and works in London, she has been included in numerous exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, and she was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize from the Tate Gallery in London in 1997.

In Self-Portrait, 2000, Gillian Wearing conceals her face behind an eerie mask that sports an indifferent expression. All but her eyes are hidden behind a molded composure of smooth skin and taut lips, and this altogether blank portrayl is further intensified by its massive size. For Wearing, sometimes the purpose of a mask is to send the viewer back to a time before our experiences shaped who we are. In a sense, a person wears their life on their face, and the mask has the ability to conceal that life. Here in her Self-Portrait, 2000, Wearing has sealed her mouth shut, while much of her video work features people baring their souls and relaying deeply personal stories to her camera lense. Although she is mostly disguised, the artist reveals herself to us through the simple presence of the mask. Wearing is often described as shy, and she attributes this hesitancy to an early unease with language. She even admits to ripping up her books at a young age in frustration over her inability to use language properly, and her clamped lips in Self-Portrait, 2000 show her firm distatse for self-expression.

--Jennifer Tafe, MA, Art History, George Washington University