Masks of Self

In a world that persistently demands coherence of the self, Masks of Self gestures toward the fractures, performances, and multiplicities that constitute identity. This project resists the imperative to define, instead lingering in the quiet spaces between what is seen and what is withheld. Drawing from the legacy of Gillian Wearing and Claude Cahun—artists who disassembled the self through disguise and revelation—this work interrogates the duality of the mask: as both armour and aperture.

Through a series of self-portraits and intimate encounters with others, each subject cloaked in some form of mask, Andreea Chitan explores how identity is mediated, constructed, and obscured. These images are not answers, but propositions—each frame a site of tension between disclosure and concealment. The mask becomes not a tool to hide, but a means to question the very architecture of visibility, a gesture that disturbs the expectation of knowing and being known.

Masks of Self is not merely a collection of photographs; it is a visual meditation on the instability of selfhood. It is a quiet reckoning with the need to perform, to protect, to belong. And in that reckoning, it becomes an invitation—to consider the veils we wear, the selves we offer, and the fragile truths we carry beneath the surface.