Why do billboards and advertisements have pictures of people’s faces, specifically eyes, seeming to always be looking at you? Why does it feel like they are trying to connect with the viewer? When the viewer looks at them and the picture of the person looks back, it creates a false intimacy. In a similar way I find that my physical body is present-looking out at others around me, but my “self” is not known. Could images of myself exist in a similar way?

Through manipulated images, videos, and performance I show the desire and struggle to stay closed-off, being only an “image” of myself. I am closed off because I am afraid of people knowing me intimately and knowing the ugly parts of me, so I only show them my clean and easily digestible image. Only in opening up to trusted friends about my flaws, sin struggles and experience with verbal abuse has allowed my to grown beyond being seen as an image, and into a whole person.

Using the void black backgrounds and cut up, blurred, distorted, and generally manipulated images, these representations of “self” portraits and “stand-ins” are only a simulacra of emptiness and disconnection. To further show this fear of being known intimately my performance piece “Layers of Nesting” shows the different layers that I hide behind. The first layer represents my physical self and is made of glittering tulle and flowers it distracts from the second layer which is made of black twisting cord yet remains appealing. The last layer, however, is created from a mass of black twisting cord that hangs and drips. The ugly layer I want to hide that contains flaws, sin, and abuse, but need to expose to understand genuine intimacy.

Kirstin was born in Des Moines Iowa. In 2020 she received her bachelor’s degree in English and Studio Arts from Grand View University. Lundy has been included in Grand View’s spring art show and published in their literary magazine Bifrost in the spring of 2019 and 2020 both located in Des Moines. Her work explores uncomfortable topics of connection between vulnerability and intimacy, using illustration and digital and hand-manipulated photography. She often uses muted tones like black, brown, and sometimes red to create a sense of heaviness in her work. Uncomfortable heavy subjects are not ones she shies away from as a fan of horror and the strong desire she feels to talk about subjects we often avoid or hide from others. Lundy currently lives, attends church, and works in Des Moines, Iowa.