Multiplicity

• 160x800cm
• watercolor and ink on unprimed cotton canvas
• 2025

About the painting

I’ve painted a very large watercolor of a plant, but instead of flowers it grows human heads. I think of it as a kind of family tree, though not in the traditional sense of ancestry. For me, it’s more like a tree of the self, showing different versions of who I am, or could be.

They say every person who knows you, knows one version of you and many different versions of you exist. As many people you cross paths with, more versions of you appear. I wanted to paint this tree of identity branching into multiple versions one person is and could potentially be.

The heads I paint don’t have hair or eyelashes, and that is intentional. I wanted them to look stripped back, almost embryonic, as if they are not yet finished. At the same time, I gave each face its own distinct features, so even though they look similar in their bare state, they still feel like different people. I wanted to show identity even in this raw form.

I also like the connection between a body and a plant, how both are organic, cyclical, and constantly changing. The work plays with that overlap, suggesting that identity grows in the same way a vine does, branching out, splitting and regenerating itself. I am exploring this overlap between natural and psychological processes, how the self is never singular, but multiple and always evolving.

Sections

The painting can be divided into 5 square paintings 140x140cm and works as one painting, but also as 5 separate ones. When separated I think of these paintings as separate identities:

1. Multiplicity I : The new growth
   The top painting, very last person you met who knows the last version of you
2. Multiplicity II : Duality
   The only painting with 2 heads, showing we can be more versions to the same person
3. Multiplicity III : The Core
   The middle painting
4. Multiplicity IV : Singularity
   The first single formed person after the origin
5. Multiplicity V : The origin
   Bottom painting with the roots

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