Art & Identity: Jamie Salmon

Jamie Salmon, Fragment #3
60cm x 25cm x 80cm
Silicone, pigment, fiberglass, acyrlic and hair
2008.

This work by Jamie Salmon employs hyperrealistic qualities to express both the nature of identity and reality and how both interplay.

The partial form of the sculpture represents the forming, deforming or decomposition of an identity, a literal tearing away of the flesh to see what is underneath. In this case it is fibre-glass fibres that are seen, instead of the expected capillaries and muscles. Although the humanlike parts of the sculpture are so believable, this figure has never had an identity. She is the creation of the artist and yet the melancholy look in her eye is still able to connect with the viewer.

This work portrays a physical fragility, as well as an emotional one. The viewer can believes that this figure has a story, a past, a life and also that her story, her past and her life have been reduced down to what she is before us: Only part person, only part personality, only part of an identity.