Color Theory
Color Theory is a contemporary art project that explores how national identity is constructed, performed, and destabilized through the symbolic use of color. Presented as a 4K performative video, the work treats the human face as a site of inscription where political belonging, ideology, and cultural narratives are visually enacted and questioned.
Color Theory as a Contemporary Art Project
Color Theory as a contemporary art project focuses on the act of applying, blending, and dissolving the colors of a national flag directly onto the skin. This gesture transforms the face into a mutable surface, challenging the rigidity of nationalist symbolism and exposing identity as a process rather than a fixed condition. The video unfolds slowly, emphasizing the physicality of the act and the tension between representation and embodiment.
Performative Video and the Symbolism of Color
The performative dimension of the work draws attention to how color operates as a visual shorthand for collective identity. In Color Theory contemporary art, color is not treated as an abstract aesthetic element, but as a historically charged material shaped by colonial legacies, political power, and cultural regulation. The gradual mixing of pigments disrupts clear distinctions, producing ambiguous tones that resist easy categorization.
National Identity, Hybridity, and the Body
Color Theory situates itself within contemporary debates on identity, borders, and representation, suggesting that belonging is not inherited or imposed, but constantly renegotiated. Technology, in the form of high-resolution video, amplifies the intimacy of the gesture while reinforcing its visibility within mediated spaces.
Color as a Political and Cultural Construct
By engaging with the face as a canvas, the project interrogates how bodies are marked, classified, and normalized through visual codes. The erasure of pure colors becomes a metaphor for hybridity, migration, and cultural contamination—terms often framed negatively within nationalist discourse. Instead, the work proposes instability and porosity as productive conditions.