Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Preview image of work. pencil on paper, Portrait of RE 27468

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Portrait of RE

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Artist

Sarah Sze (Boston, MA, 1969 - )

Title

Portrait of RE

Creation Date

1998

Century

late 20th century

Dimensions

11 x 8 1/2 in. (27.94 x 21.59 cm)

Object Type

drawing

Creation Place

North America, United States

Medium and Support

pencil on paper

Credit Line

Collection of Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, copyright Sarah Sze, Photography by Barry L. Mason

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

“I am interested in how something can sit on the border of its identity,” Sarah Sze has reflected. The very question of what constitutes the contours of personal identity is explored in her portrait drawings, which operate on the basis of personal narrative rather than mimetic likeness. According to Sze: “The portrait drawings . . . were done by asking each subject to write down twelve significant events in his or her life and then send me the list in an envelope. I then drew the twelve events as a conversation, and they became a portrait.” In this way, each likeness transforms moments of personal significance into a labyrinthine arrangement analogous to the structure of memory itself. The artist’s portraits thus function like imaginative maps of the self, in which personal recollection blends with artistic interpretation and scale expands and contracts.