Facing ourselves - assignment
The third fetter is all about what makes us who we are. As a little warm up I'm offering two simple assignments, ways of coming into relationship with your own face.
When we think of someone it’s usually an image of their face that comes to mind, not their arm or their knee.
Though I have two friends whose knees are uncannily similar which goes to show we do take in knees. And we could probably recognise all our friends by their hands.
But primarily, it’s their face.
I’ve just visited the newly reopened National Portrait Gallery. It’s a library of faces. Not just faces, bodies, postures, clothes and environments. But it’s the face that seems to say, ‘This is me!’.
There’s a section of the gallery dedicated to ‘death masks’. A last imprint would be taken off someone’s face before they were finally lowered into the ground. Here’s Tracey Emin’s ironic death mask (she’s alive and kicking) which I found beautiful and tender.
I wanted to touch it.
