THE SHAPE OF “I” consists of two small screens positioned on opposite sides of the structure, a camera, an AI-powered real-time image-generation system, a stainless-steel obelisk, and heated wax. When a visitor stands in front of the camera, their face is captured in real time. The system immediately generates a standardized identification photograph on the opposite screen, accompanied by an identification number.

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The work emerged from my observation of the ways in which identity becomes a condition of access. Within a contemporary art system that presents itself as a space of freedom of expression, subjects perceived as non-native are repeatedly returned to predetermined identity categories. An individual is not necessarily made visible because of what they seek to express. They must first present themselves in a form that the system is able to recognize, classify, discuss, and use. Identity therefore no longer refers only to the question of “who I am”; it becomes an organized, readable, and distributable form. Only after the “I” has been captured, recognized, transformed, and reproduced by the system does it become eligible for acceptance.

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This logic extends far beyond the art world. It operates through workplace attendance systems, building access controls, public surveillance, and the identification technologies used in railway stations and airports. In order to enter, move through, or act within these spaces, the individual must correspond to a reference image already stored within the system. During this process, the face is detached from the person, their experience, and their lived context. It becomes an identifiable, archivable, comparable, and administrable data object. As the subject enters the system, they simultaneously become the object of a machine and algorithmic gaze capable of granting or denying access.

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Through repeated exposure to these standards of recognition, individuals gradually learn to anticipate and adapt to them. The system’s rules no longer remain external; they enter the way a person understands, constructs, and presents themselves. Before acting or expressing something, the primary consideration is no longer simply, “What do I want to do?” but rather, “What must I do in order to be correctly recognized?”, “Who should I become?”, and “What should I look like?” The system’s criteria become an internal framework through which the individual organizes self-perception and self-presentation. Through the continuous effort to adjust oneself to an expected image, the self is progressively reduced to a readable form.

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The work does not explain this process from the outside. It makes the mechanism act directly upon each visitor. The system transforms the visitor’s face into a frontal, clear, recognizable, and numbered identification photograph. On the rear screen, the visitor encounters a version of themselves that has been reorganized and calibrated according to the requirements of the machine: a face detached from its singularity and converted into a format that can be read, classified, and stored.

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This standardized face appears within a stainless-steel obelisk, surrounded by white wax that gradually melts and drips. The face has acquired the form required to enter the system, yet it is simultaneously confined within the structure that imposed this form. The visitor becomes both the object and the witness of their own standardization. The installation makes perceptible a process that is usually concealed behind recognition, security, and ease of access: in order to be admitted by the system, the “I” must first assume a shape that the system is capable of recognizing.