Seeing the self in Kiko Capile’s The Face of Another

In an exercise of seeing, all we are is all we see. Simultaneously, there are entirely different worlds unfolding before someone else’s eyes, different realities lived in the same plane.adidas shoes on sale adam and eve sex toy cheap wig nfl shop discount code best human hair wigs adidas yeezy 700 mnvn adidas yeezy slide nike air max 97 mens customize jersey best human hair wigs nfl com shop best sex toy shop nfl jerseys nike air maxes 270 nike air max terrascape 90 men’s shoes

Titled eponymously after a book by Japanese Author Kobo Abe, Kiko Capile’s portraits for The Face of Another dead on look at our sense of identity and perception, and the warping that occurs between how we look at ourselves versus how others see us.

Capile’s dysmorphic characters allow us to peer into the alter-egos we form when we adapt to different environments, like the archetypes of our personas throughout the different phases of our lives—the innocent child, the hopeful youth who can still unflinchingly look ahead to the future with bright eyes, the mad lovers whose identities intertwine symbiotically or destructively, and the gaping nakedness of bone and interior body parts that, at the end of the day, remind us we all look more alike than we think under our skins

With the added lenses of social media and virtual realities, an exercise like this has a tendency to bring out uncomfortable, pervasive questions we find hard to confront: Are we really as good as people say we are? Do we really dislike the things others dislike about us? Are there parts of ourselves we should file down to fit the frame?

Believing that people are complex, maybe we can come to a warmer acceptance of the messy but raw and real ways we move about in the world and in our own skin, and more sympathy when we see others squirming just as awkwardly to find the best way to fit into theirs. Maybe the unpredictable parts have their own place and function in the world. That the shadow parts are as telling and real even with no light to cast visibility upon their existence. That, at the end of the day, our insides remind us of our sameness more than our differences—everywhere, across—more than we think.

Nikki Ignacio