The art of selling
yourself
‘The Art of Selling Yourself’ is a satirical art performance based on personal experience and inspired by a comment made on my Curriculum Vitae during a job interview. It utilises the visual and historical connotations of 17th and 18th-century “Raree shows” or “Peep boxes”. This is informed by my interest in illusions, theatre and optical apparatuses, which combine to examine themes around social issues.
The ‘peep-box’ serves as a metaphor to comment on modern recruitment procedures, which are generally intrusive. Therefore, interviewees often sell themselves artificially to prospective companies. The performance is a reflection on my own limitations within the job market. Being confronted with such criticisms about my career choices allowed me to examine the parameters of my own cage.
Watch the
Performance
In the course of the week-long exhibition at Jack House Gallery, I performed the 31 minutes long ‘reversed’ peep show once to twice a day. The performance consisted of me re-enacting my CV, dressing up in 8 different uniforms one after the other facing the window. Performing at a slow pace with limited deliberate interactions with the outside world established some distance between myself and the viewers.
Featured in
'Verhasselt experiments with new technologies to rethink the genre of portraiture, harnessing Computer Generated Imagery to create a series of performative self-portraits that each comment upon women’s role in the work place. At first glance, the portraits look to be photographs taken in the studio, but closer inspection reveals a catalogue of glitches that show the images to be digital constructions.Verhasselt explores the possibilities and the limitations of portraiture in the age of AI.'
Sabina Jaskot-Gill
Senior Curator, Photographs - National Portrait Gallery
