IAMART

IAMART is a self-portrait made of other people’s words. Cut-out headline type is pasted across the canvas the way it gets pasted onto a woman — what he loves about me, what he expects, what I am supposed to be — and then answered, block by block, in the first person: I am art. I am an artist. I am fine art, an intellectual creature, and so much stronger than him in whatever situation.

A black doorway with a gold-leaf arch stacks the labels one on top of another, elegant to disturbing; a gold circle holds the confession — a great manipulator. The last line, small, at the bottom edge: and all I wanted to be was just me.