Alexa Wright

Cover Story is a video installation that draws attention to the significance attributed to both 'normal' and 'abnormal' human faces and to the impulse to classify people in terms of gender, race, age, ability and social status. In the installation an image of an out of focus flesh-coloured shape is projected onto a black wall. The shape gradually resolves into a face with no identifying features. The experience of watching this blurred form is unsettling. It reveals the strength of the human impulse to attribute a recognizable identity to a face. It also demonstrates how the erasure or illegibility of the face inevitably troubles any reading of individual identity. Beside the projection a black and white head and shoulders shot of a woman is shown on a small monitor. She is seen recounting the personal experiences of someone who, it seems, has a facial abnormality, but her voice is not heard and her face looks relatively ‘normal’. Her words are articulated through exaggerated facial gestures and subtitles. There is a clear disjunction between the appearance of the face of the person shown on the monitor and the narrative text. Cover Story explores the extent to which the identity of any 'normal' or 'abnormal' subject is constructed in the mind of the observer.