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EGO MASKS is a series of essential portraits where faces become playful, symbolic masks. Minimal lines, few colors, and bold codes reduce identity to its surface, exploring the expanding, exposed, and ironic nature of the contemporary ego.

XXY PORTRAITS is a series of essential, playful portraits where faces are reduced to clear, bold symbols. Minimal lines, a limited color palette, and XX or XY in place of eyes turn each subject into an immediate icon.

XXY PORTRAITS | EGO MASKS 2025 Saul Zanolari

XXY PORTRAITS is a series of radically reduced portraits by Saul Zanolari. With minimal lines, a tight color palette, and eyes replaced by XX or XY chromosomes, each face becomes an immediate, symbolic icon. Recurring elements — including stylized nipples — act as conceptual markers, reflecting on ego, identity, and the flattening of contemporary representation. #saulzanolari #contemporaryart #portrait #drawing #apophenia #genetic #chromosomes #art #painting #egomasks

XXY PORTRAITS becomes EGO MASKS — a system of distilled faces where identity is reduced to its sharpest markers. Minimal lines, a restrained palette, and chromosomes in place of eyes turn each portrait into a coded façade: a mask that reveals by simplifying, and exposes by erasing.

XXY PORTRAITS becomes XXY EGO — a system of distilled faces where identity is reduced to its sharpest markers. Minimal lines, a restrained palette, and chromosomes in place of eyes turn each portrait into a coded façade: a mask that reveals by simplifying, and exposes by erasing.

XXY PORTRAITS distills each face into a potent symbol — minimal lines, scarce colors, and eyes replaced by the stark codes of XX or XY.

XXY PORTRAITS is a series of essential portraits in which Saul Zanolari reduces each face to a pure symbol: minimal lines, a limited palette, and eyes replaced by XX or XY.

A portrait that flatters you, then strips you bare.

No eyes, no features—only symbols and a name: the cultural imprint that shapes you.

My characters drift through history on posters, photos, videos, book covers.

I swap faces, rewrite stories, bend reality as the ego swells and fractures.

In the XXY universe, identity becomes an echo, not a likeness.

The image pretends to be you, but reveals only what remains once everything else is erased.

Are you truly the one in the portrait—

or just another evolution of XXY?

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