Every day as we use our phones, tweet, post and browse the internet; we are seeping information that is collected to create portraits of us. I became increasing preoccupied with the notion of these portraits that we are unintentionally creating of ourselves, and wondered what this would look like.
It was around this same time, while visiting an orphanage in Zimbabwe of children who had lost their parents to HIV/AIDS, that I first met Marilyn Monroe — an adorable 5 year-old girl with the most beautiful smile. I later learned that she was named by one of the nurses after the famous American celebrity, and was amazed that even for a nurse in a small rural African clinic — it seemed almost impossible to hear the name Marilyn Monroe without instantly picturing the iconic celebrity.
Inspired by these events, I traveled throughout the US in early 2014 documenting individuals who share the name of the iconic celebrity ‘Marilyn Monroe’. The resulting series playfully portrays these ‘Marilyns’ through banal forms that suggest the unintentional portraits we create of ourselves everyday with tweets, posts, biometrics and the devices at the end of our fingertips. These canvases make use of the monochrome idiom as a foundation in an attempt to strip away any discernible biases, relegating the celebrity’s portrait to complete anonymity among those of living ordinary individuals. The paint was thickly applied with pastry tools and cooking utensils to remove any discernible gestures – echoing the idea that just as no two individuals are exactly alike, ultimately we all are the same.
