The Self-Portrait Experience, a dispositif for individual transformation and social activism: The psychological and philosophical/political dynamics in Cristina Nuñez’s practice

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. A psychological framework allowed her to interrogate the effects of this practice on others and herself. However, Nuñez positions herself as a contemporary artist practitioner, not a therapist, who believes that the arts in themselves can be transformative. This research has culminated in the current investigation of the SPEX dispositif, a term used in contemporary France after Foucault and Agamben. 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, as evidenced by data collected in her workshops over the years. 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. In this context, the SPEX dispositif defines as a set of measures taken for a specific artistic intervention. It involves plays of power, subverted in processes of subjectification, performativity and the deconstruction of dichotomies: ugly/beautiful, vulnerable/powerful, emotional/rational, unconscious/conscious, personal/public. Such processes can produce different kinds of knowledge: of oneself and one’s inner struggles, of the other and our place in relational and societal plays of power. 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. Through their publication, autobiographical visual narratives can function as an “insurrection of subjugated knowledges” (Foucault 1980, p.82), to deconstruct labels and stereotypes often associated with stigmatised collectives. This critical evaluation catalogues the development of Nuñez’s bodies of work over thirty years, interrogates its theoretical framework and reflects on the impact on participants and viewers.

This Critical Appraisal with its appendices is my intellectual property and original work, except for the peer evaluation articles in appendix No.4, and other authors’ citations, which have been appropriately referenced in the text, captions and in the bibliography at the end of the Critical Appraisal. The original work has never been published or submitted in any form elsewhere. Any re-use of any portion or section of this Critical Appraisal should be referenced citing the author, title, university and pagination. Authorship of most images is mine, and I have signed releases by all the people appearing on these images as well as those not authored by myself.