Mari Hernandez: Figments of Truth

Due to current COVID19 restrictions on campus, the Neidorff Art Gallery is currently only open to those allowed to be on campus. "Figments of Truth" brings together two photographic series of self-portraits that relate to a history of portraiture and its characteristics of canonical representation, simultaneously referencing the histories of photography and histories told through photography. The series of photographs presented create historical narratives under the guise of documentation through pictures of fictitious histories featuring characters as stand-ins for absent from normative narrative histories. These invented subjects are derived from theories of physiognomy popular at the same time as early photography.