This project is about the fear of revealing ourselves too much in the public eye, of mistakenly giving away our most deeply held beliefs or secrets. As we come of age, we learn to build an armor around ourselves — unbreakable, impenetrable, invulnerable — to cover what resides in the depths of the soul, away from prying eyes. A quirk of the mind, a bite of the lip, a queer feeling; a deep belief, a particular spark, a pleasurable taste on the tongue. We all carry something that, once exposed, would change our social standing and ourselves.
But the armor is never as sealed as we think. A look held a second too long, a sound too loud for the silence, a grip a little too tight: the giveaway is involuntary, and it comes from exactly the place the armor was built to guard. For an instant the role drops, the charade we keep up to go on in the world falls away, and the true self takes over — where secret lies with fear, and pride with shame.
What happens then is out of our hands. Sometimes the slip is seen, and it is daunting — a life changed in a single instant. More often it is missed: glanced at, swiftly moved past, and no one realizes, least of all us, how much has been given away without return. The work sits in that gap — between an omission and a life-changing event, an assumed innocence and a misconstrued intention.
