“To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” , 2021
digital photographs printed on premium semigloss paper

My HSC work aims to explore the effects of trauma on the mind and the body. It highlights the duplicitous nature of the healing process as well as the dichotomies between recovery and post-traumatic stress. The double-exposure technique captures multiple faces and states of being – sometimes vulnerably revealed, and sometimes hidden by a mask. The title of my work suggests the intersection between my photographs and the ‘Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by TS. Eliot: the idea that we rarely present our true face to the world, particularly when we are in the grip of a mental illness. My artwork focuses on the idea that sometimes, the mask becomes reality and the authentic self becomes eclipsed. The photographs in my major work aim to capture the mask in the moment of it being taken off, or accidentally slipping. It attempts to capture the sense of disassociation and disconnection in relation to a fractured identity.

Other works by Maya Armstrong

“To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” , 2021
digital photographs printed on premium semigloss paper
Emanuel School Visual Arts
“To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” , 2021
digital photographs printed on premium semigloss paper
Emanuel School Visual Arts
“To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” , 2021
digital photographs printed on premium semigloss paper
Emanuel School Visual Arts
“To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” , 2021
digital photographs printed on premium semigloss paper
Emanuel School Visual Arts

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