The Art of Self-Portraits

What is a self-portrait? The simple answer is that it is a portrait of the self. The complex answer is: anything that a person finds relevant to one's identity. Sometimes self-portraits are built around a positive idea, sometimes around a sense of loss; sometimes they are constructed as a shield or as a weapon, and turn into a manifesto of the self; sometimes they include a physical representation, sometimes they deny legitimacy to the body; sometimes gender or race (or both) are at the core of the identity, sometimes they are hidden; they are, however, never neutral and are always meaningful. In this class we will learn how to disentangle these multiple layers and will work on deconstructing them: we will focus on how each facet shapes and determines the representation and will appreciate the tactics and strategies used by the artists and authors in our syllabus (Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso, Simone de Beauvoir, Jin Min Lee, Alison Bechdel, Jhumpa Lahiri, among others). The class is taught in English and will have creative as well as critical assignments.