It is tempting to assume a level of autobiography or narrative truth in self-portraits. The artist's image is seductive: at once catering to our general inquisitiveness about others' hidden selves and private lives, while apparently offering the opportunity to unmask the enigmatic artist persona. However the self-portrait does not always offer intimate insights, but often further mythologises an already abstract image of the artist. And while self-portraiture does not necessarily amount to navel-gazing, the act of literally writing oneself in does call forth one myth of the creator - at worst narcissistic and self-destructive, at best self-contained, but always existing in some form of self-imposed isolation.

'Self/Not-self' concerns the self-portrait and is divided into two parts; the first, according to the press release, looking at an 'embodied version of "writing in"', and the second concerning 'indirect or "absent" self-representational approaches, where strategies of surrogacy, projection and alternative personae are employed'. While the distinction between a physical image of the artist and a more symbolic interpretation can certainly be made, I am not convinced it adds much interest. Maybe more problematically, dividing the show thus almost enforces the idea that a single representational identity or true 'presence' exists, or that this 'present' portrait is somehow an image of 'self', rather than the 'not-self' of a fractured or abstract one. 'Under this mask, another mask. I will never be finished with carrying all these faces', said Claude Cahun, underlining that the 'self' is always a double, an actor; it is a fractured, multi-faceted, shifting thing.

Looking at the work here, the distinction between 'embodied' and 'alternative personae' seems particularly artificial. Throughout the show there is a sense of 'masking', with the self-as-artist one of the primary players.

The first work one encounters is George Pemba's Self Portrait. It is indeed a very traditional 'artist at work', complete with a palette and no doubt painted from a mirror in his studio. Almost seamlessly inserting itself into a pantheon of similar images produced ever since artists decided they were more special than blacksmiths, the work is differentiated only by its wry smile. In the context of 'Self/Not-self' - a show primarily made up of photography and video work - the traditional medium, familiar imagery and execution of Pemba's self-portrait seem somewhat ironic, and one expects on closer inspection to find that it is in fact a facsimile signed by Sturtevant. Beside the apparent anachronism, Pemba's grounded self-portrait seems a symbolic parent and gatekeeper to a host of younger artists, such as Zanele Muholi, Lunga Kama and Nandipha Mntambo, engaged for the most part in finding, contesting or renegotiating identity.

In Lerato Shadi's Fragile the artist's isolation is paramount, as she wholly engages with the immediate self-involved act, cut off from any outside reality. In the performance piece (seen here on video), Shadi sits on a white platform with crossed legs (that itself invoking powerful religious associations), as she starts to bind herself with masking tape. As the performance progresses the wrapping becomes much more restrictive, and there is a violent self-destructive impulse that is disconcerting; eventually only one of her hands remains free. Shadi then uses this free hand to liberate the rest of her body, tearing off large pieces of masking tape. The performance ends with an exhausted and seemingly pained Shadi, finally free of constrictions. In her methodical masking and unmasking, construction and deconstruction of the claustrophobic cocoon of her own making, Shadi delivers a strong performance, even if it is slightly overplayed towards the end.

The sense of 'heroism' and drama in Shadi's very much interior work, stands in sharp contrast to Pieter Hugo's self-portraits. These works offer no narrative save for changes in appearance over the eight years that the three portraits were taken, and read as ID photographs. These apparently straight forward documentations, as Hugo's oeuvre would predicate, seem to directly answer the criticism so oft levelled against him: 'Speak for yourself'. Entitled, Pieter Hugo, Cape Town, 2004, Pieter Hugo, Cape Town, 2008 and Pieter Hugo, Cape Town, 2009, the works are an expression of his work as photographer/documenter, and could just as well be called 'Documentary Photographer' (a la August Sander).

There is something quite self-conscious about documenting oneself as a documenter, but to their credit, the images are not self-aggrandising, but feature the same merciless lens that he turns on his other subjects. Sander, well-known for his monumental life long project People of the 20th Century, said that 'Every person's story is written plainly on his face', and these works are as much engaged with an image of the self as Pemba or Shadi's.

While the principle upon which the two shows making up 'Self/Not-self' is divided might be arbitrary, the work on display is anything but, and the first half of this show manages to go beyond its own brief to explore, amongst others, an interpretation of the self as artist.

Opens: February 19
Closes: March 21

Brodie/Stevenson
373 Jan Smuts Avenue, Craighall, Johannesburg
Tel: (011) 326 0034
Email: info@artextra.co.za
www.artextra.co.za
Hours: Tue - Fri 10.30am - 5.30pm, Sat 9.30am - 3pm