Self Portrait of You + Me (Marylin Face)

The self-portrait is partial, even incomplete, almost anonymous, since it exists only through the title. Nothing else indicates it, and what we see is rather a portrait of Marilyn Monroe in the style of Warhol’s silkscreen prints, superimposed on our own reflection in a mirror. A nearly universal symbol and an indispensable figure in Western visual culture—one repeatedly reimagined by the art of her time—Marilyn dominates the faces surrounding her in the work. Here, she is an icon that burns away and turns to ashes. The viewer, reflected in the background of the work, becomes evanescent in turn, as if on the verge of going up in smoke as well. The intertwining of identities at play in Self Portrait of You + Me (Marylin Face) thus seems to culminate in a shared disappearance.