“I now know myself am not the final form of my being. We must constantly die in one way or another to the selfhood already achieved”

-J. Campbell

We are no longer self reliant in our culture. Not even our sense of identity is truly our own. As a primarily consumer culture we rely on our material possessions to define us. Brand name items can act as a form of short hand letting people know our class level, interests, and group that we associate ourselves with, whether it be a Prada hand bag or a series of collectable plates, we are what we have. If anyone of us were to die tomorrow the things we owned would tell people who we are.

In an attempt at self-awareness I went through all of my belongings and put aside everything that I could disassociate from myself, everything from old magazines and clothes, to letters from old friends and photographs. It is a personal fear of mine that I would have to go through one of my loved ones things and be placed in the position to decide what was important. What really is of value here? What is relevant and what is disposable.

Each object was then be placed in its own separate gift box that was silk screened with various rejected incarnations of myself playing with the idea of how we package our self and present ourselves to the world.

Viewers were invited to take a box as a gift with the understanding that they had to write down in the provided book the contents of the box. The remaining list will then serve as the profile of an individual that no longer exists.