Alexandra do Carmo, Self Portrait, polaroid photographs, variable dimension, 2001.

"Self Portrait, is composed by a series of izone polaroid photographs taken after my arrival in New York during 2001. In it I depict my own naked body as the material base for the art work. My body movement is almost static as I lay dow on top of my studio table, it becomes a surrogate for authorial production, constituting a particular self referential ateliê's scenario that nevertheless inscribes the author's body within the ultimate performatic act--exposure to the viewer's desire of transformation. This body merges as representation/presentation of my own timeline of practice and the conceptual base of my works on paper--where repetition is crucial to produce a continuous drawing time line. The photographs depict the passage of time as the light coming from the studio window hits the naked body and changes its appearance, alluding to the way artistic practice is transformative of object and subject. This cinematic timeline does not have a limited time frame nor does the viewer knows how long the event lasted, it is a sort of timeless event of what happens on the backstage of art--wavelengths coming from a studio window defining with more or less intensity the shape of a vulnerable and exposed authorial body. According to the NASA website "When a light wave encounters an object, they are either transmitted, reflected, absorbed, refracted, polarized, diffracted, or scattered depending on the composition of the object and the wavelength of the light." It is this possibility of authorial transformation in practical experience and interaction with what comes from the outside of one's studio walls, metaphorically trapped into light that constantly lived with me every day I laid down on this table--street light shaping the object/body/authorial intention and what eventually also returns to itself through its absorption." Alexandra do Carmo (texto enviado via email em Maio 2024). Every day for a period of time I did set up my body in ways of serving the eye of a camera and the concept envisioned by this same body-- matter and thought. I represent/present myself as the materialisation of my own thoughts, as if ideas could be served on the studio/table as a platter to be used. It interrogates the nature of self portraiture, and what it is to duplicate one's own self. In this case, a self-portrait is a portrait of a statement of the author´s full commitment to authorial exposure, to be intercepted by other bodies. The body presented/represented in these photographs is a backstage vision of the studio practice that continuously changes with the passage of time/light as authorship is served publicly raw-- the author becomes available to be dressed with other meanings. Ultimately a self portrait is nothing but a recognition of how and what one's own matter reflects and scatters external wavelengths, but also absorbs them transforming them in thermal authorial energy or diffracts this light, bending and spreading its waves around this matter when its size is equivalent to the ones of the matter hit by them. A self portrait is a working surface always ready to be transformed by public wavelengths.