Wearing Your Narrative grew from an interest in the stories people tell themselves about who they are and how those stories can gradually become part of their identity.

 

Experiences, interpretations and beliefs often begin as attempts to make sense of the world, yet over time they can take on a life of their own. What starts as a narrative becomes something we carry, display, defend or inhabit.

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The three figures represent different relationships with these self-created stories. One wears the narrative as a living presence entwined around the body, allowing it to tighten its hold until it begins to restrict movement, possibility and joy. Another wraps itself in narrative as a garment of status, a badge of honour. The third shelters behind it, using the story as protection against uncertainty, vulnerability or change.

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The handwritten forms surrounding the figures hint at the words from which these narratives are built: repeated thoughts, interpretations and conversations that slowly become woven into the way we see ourselves and the world around us. Though made of nothing more tangible than language, these stories can become surprisingly substantial.

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The work reflects on how easily we transform experience into identity, and how often we continue to wear those identities long after the events that shaped them have passed.

Wearing your Narrative

2026

Watercolour on Paper

750mm x 500mm

R 14 000

​Original available - YES

Unframed

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