SELF PORTRAITS
2016 – ongoing series
My ongoing photo and performance-based self-portraiture series deals with issues of displacement, identity, inclusivity, gender, and sexuality as I explore the psychological and physical idea of where I fit. The work is about the process of seeing myself as a part of the American landscape, and ultimately believing and accepting that I am part of that landscape without loosing my roots that tie me to where I grew up in the Czech countryside. I was born in former Czechoslovakia close to the border with Austria, behind the Iron Curtain, and as a teenager and student, I rarely traveled out of my home country for longer than few weeks, until February 2011 when I left to the United States without returning to Czech for eight years (2018). Part of this project, or maybe where it really started, is about trying to recreate that comforting presence of nature in my life that was so much a part of my childhood, and from which I grew distant in the United States, and yet what I desperately needed to hang onto tightly in order to survive in a new place emotionally.