Taking Up Space

Standing Nude in a Gallery of Nude Images of Myself

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I took these photos at Mesa College Art Gallery during the Perceive Me exhibition.

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Walking through a gallery full of paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures of my naked body, I decided to photograph myself nude among the work. Not as the subject this time – as the person experiencing the work. As another body in the space.

There's something about matching poses with your own painted self. Standing beside a sculpture that started from your body. Existing in the same room as all these interpretations and saying, I'm still here.

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These photos are part of the work. Performance documentation where I'm subject, object, and artist all at once. The "real" body alongside painted bodies, sculpted bodies, photographed bodies. All versions of me, all equally present in the gallery.

I'm not performing "nude model" in these images. I'm just in my body, in this space that exists because I asked artists to perceive me. Sometimes I mirror the art, sometimes I contrast with it. Sometimes I just stand in the middle of this whole ecosystem and think about how it all started – with one vulnerable ask to be seen.

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It's the Perceive Me gesture extended: not just asking to be perceived, but documenting myself perceiving how I've been perceived. Standing naked among all the different ways of being seen.