Side By Side.
“Stand side by side. Look at me. Smile. Now stop.
Get closer. Turn this way. Turn that way. Pose.
How cool. How weird. I want that. I’d hate that.
Your poor mum. Your poor parents. Your poor teachers. Your poor friends.
Do you feel each others pain? Taste each others food? Sense each others fear? Hear each others thoughts?
Who’s taller? Who’s faster? Who’s smarter? Who’s funnier?
Who’s the good one? Who’s the evil one? Oh come on, there’s always an evil one.“
You stare, you whisper, you point, you laugh. All you see is one entity, split into half.
Two bodies to make fun of, to drool over, to mock. Two bodies you compare, like they’re yours but they’re not.
My cheeks ache from smiling. My chest hurts from fake laughing. My ears burn as you point out insecurities without asking.
Unwarranted, unwanted, unnecessary, and unjust. Whys it surprising that I’ve had more than enough?
But when it boils down to it, I’d take it for eternity on end. Because, despite all the trauma, I’ve got a lifelong best friend.
Side by Side is a personal project surrounding the experience of prolonged identity confusion as an Identical Twin. The work explores the lifetime of comparison and interrogation that twins are subject to and aims to communicate both the physical and emotional effects of such unsolicited interactions.
An intertwining of bodies along an unbroken horizon speaks of the unyielding bond between the two, rooted deeply in biology and strengthened through a mutually experienced destruction of identity inflicted by the outside world.
However, only one face is revealed, revoking the viewer’s power to, yet again, draw a comparison. And so, Side by Side becomes a means through which bodily autonomy is reclaimed.