You think therefore I am.

Abstract

Since birth, we have been given ‘natural’ roles – gender, race, age (generation), family (ancestry) and even more specific traits of DNA to speak of in these recent years of scientific advancement. But there are also roles we assume ourselves to generate the sense of identity – our conscious choices in education, occupation, romance etc. Throughout our lives, we are always finding ways to integrate and believe our existence in this world is justified, ways that came with our birth that we could not decide and ways in the things we think and do – we are, constantly defined by the external. The ‘self-portrait’ as a genre, is one of the ways a person in his or her artist role, can attempt to understand and define one’s self. The series, ‘You Think Therefore I Am’ in discussion here, however removes the artist, Woo as the primary agent of representing his ‘self’ and allocates this power to his sitters and within this injunction, the artist receives the same power of representing the sitter’s ‘self’, transforming the work into a portraiture of the sitters as well.