The Self-Portrait Experience (SPEX), an art tool for individual and social transformation

Abstract

Cristina Nuñez’s artistic practice using self-portraiture began in 1988 as she turned the camera to herself to overcome self-stigma derived from addiction. A process evolved of a self-taught artistic practice into facilitating other people’s self-portraiture, leading her to devise The Self-Portrait Experience (SPEX). Since 2004 Nuñez holds SPEX workshops in diverse contexts, such as the penitentiary, mental health, addiction recovery and adolescent transition. In the workshops Nuñez holds around the world participants perform a ‘catalytic’ process by transforming emotional pain into what is referred to as artworks. Reviewing the multiple perceptions of the images produced allows participants to look at themselves through new lenses. SPEX uses the power of ubiquitous digital photography in a manner that subverts the common ‘selfie’ format, leveraging unconscious expression to explore emotions, in order to gain new insight and stimulate the creative process as reflexive. Through the publication of self-portraits and autobiographical projects, the personal and socio-political dimensions are connected. Nuñez’s practice with herself and others proposes a dialogue between emotional expression and its mirroring effects on the public. The overarching goal is providing tangible societal benefits, in the form of viewer’s identification with the subjects of the images, rather than dissociation and alienation.