E. Berger
“Whiteout”
Artist’s Statement
Within the genre of portraiture, the painting of a face grasps at personhood through authenticity of likeness. Whiting out and partially obscuring these faces disrupts the encounter with the person. In this new relationship with the portrait, the viewer is forced to search between and through the gaps, wherein they might find the multiple facets of an individual’s true self. In an age of facial identity tracking software, these works ask how much information we need to identify anyone.