COLORSxSTUDIOS

After struggling with drug addiction as a teenager, the visual artist Cristina Nuñez found solace in taking photographic self-portraits. Her project “Someone to Love”, features some of these images, which were captured over a twenty year period. “Shot after shot I live through all my different personas, looking for something I still do not know of myself,” Nuñez explains. “Whatever I do, I always succeed: my sheer humanity will always be expressed in the picture.” In short, Nuñez discovered that self-portraits, in her own words, “stimulate the unconscious to ‘speak’ with the language of art”.

My favorite photo from Nuñez’s collection is an aerial-shot, nude, self-portrait of the artist lying on her bed staring wistfully into the distance. While some may view it as an ordinary, expressionless, ‘selfie’, I see a woman in deep contemplation. She’s lying in her stillness, examining her naked truths, and finding comfort in isolation. It demonstrates that the healing power of self-portraits doesn’t just lie in the creation of an end product. Rather, it’s the introspective questions the artist asks themselves during the process that offers therapeutic assistance.

The comfort and nostalgia of my childhood was short lived, however, and it wasn’t long before I automatically began scrutinizing the proportions of this new portrait. This time, instead of allowing the feelings of shame and disappointment to engulf me, I thought back to Nuñez’s directions and decided to let my inner thoughts speak. I asked myself: “where does this insatiable expectation of perfection stem from?” Having received art and writing prizes at school, I knew from a young age that I was a “gifted” child. My confidence quickly diminished due to not feeling seen by those whose opinions mattered most. My mum and dad didn’t support my creativity as they didn’t see art as a viable career path—an ironic viewpoint considering my parents are both art lovers. As a result, I obsessed over my technical abilities, thinking that by getting “better” I could prove to them that my creativity was worth the investment. It turned out I couldn’t, and their rejection of my art felt like a rejection of me.

While I have grieved for my wasted potential, I have also found acceptance, and no longer resent my parents. Could they have done more to support me? Perhaps. However, now that I’m older, I am beginning to see how their worldview, shaped by the trauma of growing up poor, is radically different to the one I’m afforded by my privileged upbringing. Their lens of life was survival, meaning that anything that wasn’t about achieving social security was a luxury they couldn’t afford, including doing things they loved.

Contemplating these adverse experiences from my past helped me to realize that the friction I’ve faced with my artistry is not a personal failure. Instead, my experience is related to the collective struggle that many Kenyan artists experience trying to forge a creative career in the absence of functioning systems and institutional support. Given the direct correlation between the work people do and our sense of self-worth, it’s highly likely that I’ve internalized these negative experiences as character flaws and projected them onto the work I create. It’s a sobering reminder that practicing art sustainably is incomplete without investing in mindfulness and self-love.

I came back to my portrait one last time to add the final touches. Having freed myself from the pressure to produce a hyper-realistic image of myself, I was able to color in my face and breathe life into it. During the process of creating my self-portrait, I’ve accepted that the key to transforming my perception of my art starts with having compassion for the artist I am today. Falling in love with my art won’t happen overnight, but in a split-second of seeing my reflection staring back at me, I could finally see my humanity in all its glory.