Projects:

This photo documentary book I flipped through yesterday at the little gallery at South Coast is just fucking funny. This artist named Nikki Lee, conducts these experiments and takes on different projects by emerging herself in subcultures through out U.S. and Korea; she takes on different roles and plays different characters by completely assimilating herself into these different groups, these different categories. She takes stereotyping to a new level when she thoroughly transforms herself into these different people by simply (only) changing her appearance. Several projects of hers that stick to mind are punk, lesbian, stripper, ohio (white trash), school girl, and Latina. What's awesome about this girl is she doesn't half ass it, she goes all the way with these projects, for example in the lesbian one, she's truly playing that lesbian persona to the fullest; she is the man in the relationship and you see her making out with her gf. Some of these photos were more staged than others, but nevertheless you feel the realness in her pictures, it's like that's who she is, she's all these people. And you wonder which of these characters is the real her or is closest to who she really is... which of these characters does she truly relates to the most? You choose who you want to be and what image you carry, you choose what you want people to think and is it really that easy to identify a person b/c a person has this or that attributes? If a person wears his/her hairstyle a certain way, wears make up a certain way, dresses a certain way, then does that make them THAT? I mean is there a gap between how they look (appear to be) and who they are (and how they feel)? There is always some gap but how big is it? And whether it is natural, to have a gap or is it safe to assume that there's no gap, what you see is what you get? Can we all easily change our image and people's perception of who we are, by changing how we dress? If so then the world is easy to fool, and it is a matter of having the resource to change, as often and as effortless as you want. Who would I want to be then? Or what would I want to be?