Dismantledentity
Skills Used:
Writing, Photography, Photoshop, Post Production, Creative Thinking
Role: Artist, Writer, Director
Project Duration:
June 2023-
January 2025
Dismantledentity, a self portraiture project, is my attempt at understanding identity in an era of hyper-awareness: of the world, the mind, and the body. It’s about the suffocating weight of introspection, the need to define myself, and the paradox of never fully being able to. I wanted to explore what it means to lose yourself in a messy, terrifying, and cyclical way.
Each image is paired with a lyric excerpt—fragments of songs I’m writing—reflecting the different aspects of this feeling.
Cohesion and sense was not at the forefront of this project. In fact, planning connection between pieces would go against the very idea of feeling fragmented and disjointed. I let my feelings and thoughts run wild, and my hands on the screen even moreso. This is a project about unravelling, about letting go of control, and about seeing identity as something fluid, unstable, and constantly shifting; and that was the only thing I wanted reflected in my work.
The world is built on the assumption that we are fixed things—defined, recognizable, easy to categorize. That you are your job, your body, your choices, your past. That there is a single, cohesive version of you that should make sense to others, that should make sense to yourself: here I am, this is what I believe, this is what I want, this is what I am. But I cannot say any of those things with confidence. I cannot define myself without feeling like I am lying. I am not me.
That realization can break you. It certainly broke me. The second it hit, I felt like I had to find myself—to figure out what was real, what was me. I started analyzing everything. Every memory, every interaction, every pattern in my thoughts. I kept digging, thinking I’d find some core truth beneath it all. But the deeper I went, the more lost I became.
And then it clicked: maybe there is no answer. Maybe identity isn’t something you find—maybe it’s something you construct and deconstruct over and over, without ever really finishing the process.
So… what do you do with that?
Most people pick their poison. They choose a belief, a truth, a foundation—God is real. Art is real. Science is real. Love is real. My purpose is real. But if you can’t convince yourself of one singular truth, then what do you have? What do you hold onto when society is built on certainty and you don’t believe in certainty?
I think that’s why we as humans latch onto things like identity and self-expression so desperately—because it gives us something to point at and say, this is me. Even if it’s constantly shifting.
We all shape-shift, whether we realize it or not. You act one way with friends, another way with family, another way at work. Society tells us that’s just how it works. Different versions of yourself for different people, like a survival instinct. But if everyone’s doing it all the time, then what even is a stable self? At what point do you stop being one person and start being a collection of shifting identities, curated for every audience?
I think everybody has a little bit of dismantledenity in them. You know? That moment where you stop and think—who am I? Who am I supposed to be?
For some, those moments are fleeting, before latching back on to the identity they’ve built up over a lifetime. For others, the thought brings about change so they can become who they want to be. For me, it meant realizing that regardless of what identity I pick or how consistent it is to those around me, it’s never going to be “the right one.”. Maybe, in a paradoxical way, that is an identity in and of itself.