A Representation Of a Representation Of a Representation Of a Representation

Margherita Giannotti

mgian001@gold.ac.uk

Look in the mirror... What do you see? Well, everything you see it’s just you, and if you feel that is not possible let’s start from the  beginning.

Influenced by the Buddhist and Taoist philosophies and their ideas about ‘emptiness’ as the space for imagery and thus for creation, I intentionally created ‘empty’ photographs, enabling the viewer’s imagination to give them meaning, thereby creating its own subjective ‘illusory reality’.

According to Schopenhauer ‘the world is a representation’ in the sense that the reality is a semblance, an illusion constructed by our consciousness, and, for this reason, there can be no universal definition of reality since each individual creates his own world.

So, if the reality you see is just your personal representation, and photography is a representation of the reality, and the reflected image in the mirror is just a representation of a photograph which is empty, then you are able to create your illusory reality, so what do you see in that mirror but yourself? 

The intention of this work is therefore to call upon the perception of reality exploring the subconscious imagination of the human mind.