"Vulnera Occulta III"

The work explores identity as something inherently unstable and selective. It questions the idea that a person can ever be fully known, suggesting instead that every encounter reveals only a particular version of the self.

At its core lies the tension between the identity we make accessible to others and the alter ego that remains protected, suppressed, or deliberately concealed. Different people encounter different versions of us, shaped by intimacy, expectation, vulnerability, and self-preservation. What appears authentic in one moment may therefore be only one layer of a much more complex identity.

The work does not define which version is the mask and which is the truth. Instead, it challenges the distinction itself: if every facet belongs to the same person, perhaps there is no single, definitive face beneath them all.

Ultimately, the work asks whether anyone can truly know another person in their entirety or whether we exist in the minds of others only through the fragments of ourselves we allow them to see.