Overwrite (2025)
Digital colour photographic print on fine art paper, with acrylic modelling paste intervention (palette knife)
, 2025
CONCEPTUAL note
Overwrite stages the body as a surface where scripted emotions are imposed. A thick red smile, modelled in paste, cuts across a face obscured by hair—an intervention that silences individuality while demanding performance.
The imposed gesture is not benign. It signals the pressure to conform to an expected script: to appear positive, compliant, contained. Beneath the mask, the subject’s presence is erased, reduced to a role that can be repeated but never chosen.
Through this act of overwriting, the photograph becomes a confrontation. It exposes how the body is forced to host signs that do not belong to it—signs that overwrite voice, expression, and identity, while insisting on a happiness that is not lived but commanded.
Photography by Mao Sanchez, under the creative direction of the artist.