Persona: System Error — Broadcast Me / Break Me:

Persona: System Error — Broadcast Me / Break Me
2025
Acrylic on Canvas, charcoal and graphite and mixed media ink.
62 by 65 inches

All states exist at once: the controlled persona, the breaking persona, the persona that refuses containment. The instability is the point.
Identity is not a binary.
It is not either/or.
It is layered, contradictory, shifting.
A persona is not one face—it is a stack of conflicting broadcasts.
A curated persona attempts to follow the algorithm, but its layered nature refuses to stay singular or compliant.

This project explores the persona as a curated construction—an identity shaped for legibility, approval, and control. The work uses a sequence of televisions to document a persona under pressure, revealing how even the most carefully curated identity destabilizes the moment complexity leaks through.
The first television performs obedience. Its graphite grid is clean, disciplined, and controlled, built to satisfy an expectation, be consistent, be pleasing, be one thing. This persona is designed for algorithms and audiences alike. Yet even here, the ideal begins to fracture. Lines resist staying straight. The composition starts to drift out of alignment. The persona fails to conform—the breakdown begins inside the performance of perfection.
On the second television, that failure becomes visible. Structure loosens; textures interrupt order. The persona glitches. Distortion replaces clarity. The mask no longer adheres to the algorithm’s script. The promise of being easily categorized collapses under the weight of complexity.
By the third television, containment is abandoned entirely. Color erupts. Line becomes emotional, impulsive, intentional. What was once controlled becomes chaotic, yet the chaos is not accidental, it is deliberate. Even disorders contain purpose. At this stage, the persona no longer negotiates with expectation. It refuses narrative. It refuses to shrink.
Surrounding these three televisions is a much larger fractured screen, serving as the architecture of visibility—the systems that demand singularity: institutions, social platforms, the gaze of others. A small flame sits within that cracked surface, suggesting something irreducible, something that resists being processed into simplicity.