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PAINTED IDENTITY

The children’s faces were painted using oil paint during Pera’s 3 months stay in the orphanage in Nepal, she then asked each child to complete their portrait by painting their bodies using pure pigment from Nepal. The paintings - simultaneously portraits and self-portraits of the children - are displayed alongside a descriptive label by Elena Orlandi, a psychologist’s interpretation of the children’s use of colour, composition and symbols. Pera’s act of collecting, documenting and presenting disparate fragments of information, which like pieces of a puzzle constitute the child’s portrait, approximates the empirical, quasi-scientific methods employed in anthropology.

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