Interfacial Intimacies

The University of Tasmania is developing this curated group exhibition for the 2023 Dark Mofo Festival.  The ten artist's work addresses issues around fluid identity in contemporary culture.

What does it mean to be the absolute essence of yourself without being attached to any of it?

For a long time, many philosophers have sought to define the essential aspects of the self. In contemporary culture, exclamations such as “Be true to yourself”, “you’re not being yourself” consider that the ‘self’ is defined and a trustworthy container within which you can be found. Emerging theories of selfhood recognise that it isn’t so simple. We know that we can have as many social selves as the people who recognise us. Rather being fixed and always coherent, an alternative understanding is that our personalities can be participated in as a plethora of parallel processes and possibilities. Of continuous becoming. Of transformation. Interfacial Intimacies brings together artists who hold and express tenderly the multiple aspects of their selves through a series of portraiture and anti-portraiture. Paintings, films, installations, sculpture, photography, and performance in this exhibition explore the tensions of our networked personalities - our shadows, our masks, our shame.