Conceptual Overview
Objects for Suspending Identity is both a standalone artwork and a conceptual map for future inquiry. It features a grid of six isolated objects: a LinkedIn logo, a clothes hanger, a coat hook, a mannequin, a clothing rail, and a meat hook bearing raw flesh. Each of these elements functions as a symbolic device for holding, displaying, or substituting identity.

We live in a world of increasingly curated personas and editorialised lives, where authenticity is often withheld, abstracted, or outsourced to platforms. Identity becomes something we manage – strategically presented, suspended in performance – rather than something grounded or embodied. This work confronts that condition directly.

Material and Visual Strategy
Stark and schematic, the composition recalls product photography or instructional diagrams. Each object is digitally cut out and presented against a white background, removing any narrative context and positioning them as objects of function and metaphor.

Each element gestures toward a mode of identity:

• LinkedIn – the hyper-professional, self-edited avatar
• Hanger and rail – mass-produced conformity, fashion cycles, depersonalisation
• Mannequin – the smooth stand-in for an idealised self, void of interiority
• Meat hook – the raw materiality of the body, reduced to object
• Coat hook – everyday domestic utility, a placeholder for presence

This is not a catalogue of accessories, but a visual taxonomy of how identity is stored, performed, or displaced.

Reflection
In this piece, I’m reflecting on the condition of the self in late capitalist society—a self that is often not lived, but arranged. Our identities are hung up, paused, filtered, waiting for display or validation. We scroll through lives that feel real but are often composed. Objects for Suspending Identity explores this fragmentation and delay: the sense that the “real” person is never fully present, always just beyond the hook.

This piece marks an expansion of my ongoing exploration of commodification and identity. It outlines several future directions for my practice – particularly the professionalised self (LinkedIn), the depersonalised self (clothing systems), and the visceral self (meat/body). I’m also interested in how these objects might be deployed sculpturally or photographically in public settings – e.g., a clothing rail on a tube platform – where their symbolism can confront passers-by in the space where curated and anonymous lives intersect.

Ultimately, this work asks: what are we hanging up, and what are we hiding? When identity is always suspended – waiting to be picked, swiped, or endorsed – what happe