This artwork began with a question I didn’t expect to ask myself.
During the course I’m currently taking, I had many different ideas for the final project. Too many, actually. The real challenge was choosing one direction.
Another artist once mentioned the brand Empório Aragão, which often collaborates with contemporary artists and translates their work into wearable pieces. When I explored their Artist Collaboration Series, I was fascinated by the idea that a garment could become a canvas — a place where art, fashion, and personal expression meet.
The idea stuck with me. If clothing can become a canvas for identity, then words could become something people wear as a statement about themselves.
That thought immediately connected with something I had been thinking about for years: I always wanted to create a phrase that could only be read in a mirror.
So, I combined the two thoughts.
The first phrase appeared almost immediately: “Don’t simplify me.” It felt strong and personal. It resonated with how easily people reduce others to labels: quick conclusions, simplified versions of who someone is.
Originally, I imagined the phrase written across a dress. But as I started sketching, I realized I was stuck in decorative thinking — focusing on how the phrase would move on fabric or how it would be worn. At some point I stopped myself. The idea needed more space. It didn’t belong on a dress. It belonged on a canvas. That choice altered the course of the work completely.
Rather than creating a single piece, I began envisioning a series of three works, each exploring identity and labeling from a different perspective. I searched for two additional phrases that could exist within the same conceptual framework. Eventually, I found them: “I am not linear” and “You don’t define me.”
Each phrase then became the starting point for its own visual experiment, guiding how I would play with form, perception, and reading.
For “I am not linear”, I want to use typoglycemia — the pheonmeon wehre the brain can stlll raed wrods even wehn the ltteers insdie tehm are dsitorted. This reflects cognitive bias: our minds automatically fill in gaps and assume meaning, even when the information is distorted.
For “You don’t define me,” I explore direction and distortion of reading. I challenge the standard left-to-right mechanics of English by introducing alternative reading directions. By borrowing from non-Western reading systems, I highlight how cultures organize and categorize individuals, ultimately questioning the structures that attempt to define us.
And “Don’t simplify me” works through mirroring. The phrase can only be read through a mirror, so the viewer literally sees themselves while trying to read it. This connects to the psychological idea of mirroring, where identity is formed through how others reflect us back to ourselves.
While experimenting with colors, materials, and mediums over several weeks, the concept gradually took shape:
Identity: The Failure of Reading
The triptych explores how we “read” people the way we read text — quickly, automatically, and often incorrectly. Language becomes a tool to reveal how perception works, and how easily it can fail.
In the next post, I’ll talk about each piece individually: how the three works connect inside the triptych and the material experiments that helped me translate these ideas into a visual form.
For the ones who notice.
