FROM XXY PORTRAITS TO EGO MASKS
After XXY – de’ Medici, the work moved away from history, but not from language.
The exhibition was built on names that already carried meaning. Even reduced to signs, the Medici remained readable. In language, naming is never neutral. To name is to define. To define is to fix.
When XXY Portraits expanded between August 2024 and December 2025, the same mechanism remained in place. Hundreds of ordinary faces, still recognizable. Not only because of form, but because a name was written beneath each portrait. The name stabilized the image. It confirmed identity.
As long as the name existed, the subject remained intact.
Removing it meant losing recognition. Without a name, the portrait no longer refers to someone. Identity collapses. What remains is not a person, but an ego without coordinates.
In 2026, this ego is swollen.
Unrecognizable, yet amplified. Detached from history and biography, it grows without structure. It does not need definition to exist. On the contrary, it expands in the absence of it.
The visual shift follows this condition. The cheeks widen, redden, and extend until they cover the eyes. The gaze disappears. There is no exchange, only surface. Emotion without narrative becomes visible on the face.
This moment is an interregnum.
Ego Masks emerges here. Not as a new identity, but as a residue left after identity is removed. A mask without name, without role. An ego impossible to recognize, and impossible to ignore.
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