Expression 2 (Childhood Portraits)

This grid of children’s portraits stages innocence as a contested surface, where each face becomes a luminous screen for invented masks—cartoon emblems, circuitry-like marks, and chromatic stains that feel both playful and invasive. The acidic greens and high-contrast lighting flatten the space into an almost digital plane, sharpening the tension between tender gaze and imposed iconography. Repetition across nine panels reads like a taxonomy of identities, suggesting how childhood is continually edited by culture, technology, and spectacle until the “self” becomes a collage of borrowed signals. Beneath the bright palette, the work carries a quiet unease: a chorus of individuals whose expressions resist being reduced to their vivid overlays.