This dissertation examines how the indigenous subject has been constructed in the Americas and explores the interests of individuals, power groups, and institutions behind these characterizations. Two notions are proposed: literary portrait and self-portrait, as opposing tendencies configuring the indigenous subject. The portrait starts as a Hispanic colonial creation that kidnaps indigenous memory, pillages natural resources and is the basis of stereotypes that still endure. Next, creoles and mestizos' portrait at the birth of Latin American nations shows the indigenous as barbarians or noble savages, enabling territorial and mental occupation of indigenous spaces and attempting to assimilate the indigenous to the new nations. A portrait of indianism emerges, idealizing and accepting the "indian" under the mestizo category, dissociated from a culture, assumed as dead or a relic of the past. The final representations are the portraits of indigenism, where the indigenous are social subjects without protagonism, and of neo-indigenism, where they are represented with a religious wisdom and power to fight against foreigners that destroy the sacred circle of nature. In radical contrast, the self-portrait defies all previous representations. Authors Enrique Sam Colop (Maya K'iché), José Luis Ayala (Aymara) and Elicura Chihuailaf (Mapuche) recover indigenous literary autonomy. Vito Apüshana (Wayúu), Briceida Cuevas (Maya Yucateca) and Natalia Toledo (Zapotec) consolidate the self-portrait at the end of the XXth and the beginning of the XXIst centuries. Self-portrait is built from tradition and reinvention of the culture, recovering indigenous agency, burying centuries of the seizure of indigenous memory and witnessing from a plural "I" their historical resistance to old and new colonialisms. This literary self-portrait accompanies the struggles for political, economic, cultural and ecological autonomy; recovers the indigenous languages as a tool for resistance, knowledge and aesthetic; uses the dominant foreign languages to form a multicultural reader; defends the notion that nature possesses a language that can be decoded; emphasizes the power of words; uses poetry as a tool for decolonization, fighting racism, and demanding equality; and values of the concept of Buen Vivir. These concepts proclaim a deep cultural transformation that is now underway. This dissertation is written in Spanish.

This thesis concerns a body of work titled "One-Liners". Through portraiture the paintings deal with how humor can illuminate difficult and complex emotions.

Embodied in my art practice is the exploration of the relationship between my subjective self as consumer and the material culture of home. As an artist this praxis suggests alternative ways of reconstructing domestic subjectivity (self-portrait) through the formal processes of drawing and cataloguing insignificant collections acquired through 'lived experience'. This analysis utilises Michel de Certeau's concept of bricolage, a 'tactic' of fragmentation that 'makes do with what is at hand' to corrupt the 'proper' space and time of a contemporary productionist society. In the course of developing an art practice, I seek to re-value marginal space and reappropriate time from a modern culture designed for efficiency.Through the introduction of key elements in process drawing, I have adopted a method to subvert modernist representations of the domestic. As Certeau writes 'mak[ing] use of techniques of re-employment in which we can recognise the procedures of everyday practice' is a political deployment, an individual 'tactic' orchestrated against social 'strategy'. A fragmentary tactical operation allows me fleeting moments of visibility to record 'lived experience' through an installation based art practice.

With the growing use of digital camera and internet album, it brings a new internet visual culture called as ¡§internet self-portrait culture¡¨ in Taiwan. Internet users take digital self-portrait photos, upload self-portrait onto personal websites like blog or internet album, and communicate with people in this way. This culture is much popular especially among the adolescents (aged form 12 to 24) in Taiwan. This research refers to what kind of effects this new internet visual culture brings to the adolescents, especially focusing on the effect it brings to self-identity development and social relation. And interview is adopted in this research. According to the result, first, internet self-portrait culture could be seen as an adolescent sub-culture. In this subculture, the adolescents develop a series of communicative methods like ¡§to see¡¨ and ¡§to be seen¡¨. In this way, the adolescents chase for chances and stages for ¡§showing oneself¡¨, and the ¡§beautiful looks¡¨ is the main point of the show. ¡§Chasing for aesthetics of body¡¨ and ¡§everyone having equal and unique prettiness¡¨ are the two important values in this subculture. As for self-identity, participating in internet self-portrait culture brings the adolescents the experience of alternative role playing experience. Moreover, it helps build up self-confidence and positive self-identity on looks. As for social relation, it helps the adolescents keep in touch with the old friends and brings them new friends who help the adolescents build self-confidence on looks. Besides, participating in internet self-portrait culture could be seen as a way for the adolescents to retrieve ¡§freedom of making friends¡¨ and ¡§freedom of managing one¡¦s own body¡¨ from their parents.

AUTOGRAPHIE : écriture de soi par soi. Dessin du sujet par le sujet. Mise en oeuvre de ce regard retourné sur lui-même. Enfin, langage graphique sur l'existence jusqu'à l'oubli de soi.L'autoportrait n'est qu'un point de départ pour un questionnement plus universel. C'est littéralement la mise en oeuvre, et de ce fait la mise en acte, de l'être témoignant aux autres de sa propre conscience. Poignante tentative de mise en lien avec soi-même pour rendre possible le lignage avec autrui. Troublante relation au monde qui nous révèle acteur et spectateur de son infinie révolution ombilicale. Soudaine perception de ceux qui réalisent qu'en témoignant de moi, je témoigne d'eux. / AUTOGRAPHY : The writing about oneself in one's own handwriting. The drawing of the subject by the subject. The realization of this self-focused perspective. Finally, the graphical language about existence up to self-oblivion.Self-portrait is only the starting point for a more universal questioning. lt is literally the realization - and thus the action - of a (human) being conveying his self-awareness toothers. The poignant attempt to relate to oneself so as to relate to others. Our troubling relation to the world leaving us actors and spectators of its endless umbilical revolution. The sudden perception of those who become aware that accounting for oneself is accounting for them.

Investigations into Social Game Theory is a document that describes my two-year exploration of the ritual encapsulated in our societal framework. It discusses the thoughts and processes that accompanied the three bodies of work that led to the creation of my final thesis exhibition.

This thesis examines John Ashbery's poem "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" and its revision of the traditional distinction between theory and poetry. Drawing a relationship between the poem's subject and the practices of postmodern theoretical discourse, the thesis posits the poem as an artifact of these changes. Creating a context for the poem, these developments not only inform the climate in which Ashbery's poem takes on significance, but, as well, explain the changing nature of literary study. Historical in its approach to the pressures and impulses within this climate of aesthetic production, the thesis traces the distinction between science and literature and how it has influenced the creation of the literary discipline. Demonstrating that the disciplinary study of literature has always been the subject of debate and discussion, it uses this understanding to place present disagreements about the need or usefulness of theory in the context of historical disagreements over the difference of literature from science or philosophy. Explaining that postmodern theory has largely worked to foreground the arbitrary nature of distinctions such as that between theory and poetry, the thesis elaborates on how poststructuralism undoes these distinctions to show how they are always the result of particular political and ideological views of representation. Using this critical insight, the thesis then reads closely the details of the poem's relationship to postmodern theory, how it works to undo the distinction between theory and poetry. Having undone this traditional distinction, however, leaves the poem in an ambivalent and unstable position. Since it passes between extant categorical definitions its own nature remains undecided and, thus, maintains an engagement with and resistance to tradition. It remains caught between the need for the aesthetic past and the need for a freedom from that past. Chapter four, therefore, explores this ambivalence, particularly as it relates to the inheritance of romanticism and modernism. Finally, in chapter five, the thesis revises the main critical perception of Ashbery as postmodern, making a case for his closer affiliation with a late version of modernism. Because of Ashbery's preoccupation with the aesthetic past, his use of the imagery, insights, and idealism of our aesthetic history, he appears to re-create a distinction between high and popular art that is more consonant with a version of modernism.

The thesis Mapping the Self-Portrait: Navigating Identity and Autobiography in Visual Art is a practical project. It explores the relationship between autobiography and self- portraiture, and how these notions of the self can be represented in visual art. The exhibition 360 Potential Truisms forms the major component in this thesis, and is accompanied by a written exegesis. This exegesis explores notions of the self-portrait and autobiography in relation to identity, with focus on a post-structural approach to fragmentation and movement. Artworks have been developed to reflect a shift towards an idea of the fragmented self, involving drawing, photography, and text to allow a constantly changing interpretation of self-portraiture.

Master of Letters (with Merit) / The objective of this paper is to examine the self-portrait paintings of Frida Kahlo and to explore the way in which they articulate a ‘self’ and ‘identity’ through creating an innovative feminine vocabulary. The aim of this creative research is to explore the way in which Frida Kahlo represented her sexual subjectivity in the body of self-portraits she produced in her short life time. The self-portraits, some of which were produced in a state of severe physical disability and chronic illness, were also created in the shadow of her famous partner- socialist Mexican muralist/ revolutionary Diego Rivera. An examination of the significant body of self-portrait paintings produced by Frida Kahlo, informed by her personal letters, poems, and photographs, broadens the conventional definitions of subjective self beyond the generic patterns of autobiographical narrative, characteristic of an inherently masculine Western ‘self’. In Kahlo’s self-portraits the representation of the urban Mexican proletarian woman-child draws stylistically from the domain of European self-portraiture, early studio photographic portraiture, and the biographical Mexican Catholic retablo art, with its indebtedness to the ancient Aztec Indian symbology of self.

Double Bind: Splitting identity and the body as an object is a research project consisting of studio-based practice presented mainly in video installation format. This work looks at hysterical symptoms as a performance of a body’s split identity. The project draws on the Lacanian theory of Mirror Stage which proposes that the self experienced by the subject, and the image of that self (represented in a mirror-like reflection, or an image) are different to each other, and the development of self-awareness as misrecognition of one’s self. As a conspicuous example of split body, Chapter One describes how the hysterical body, in clinical and artistic representation, is dissociated into multiple selves. In Chapter Two, I discuss some examples of contemporary performance artists who use themselves as subjects, but whose bodies become objects that do not portray the self. In the final chapter I explain how, in my video work, I objectify my own body and how I assess whether this is a mode of self-portraiture. / During the course of this research, I studied a wide range of medical resources and psychoanalytical literature, much of which employed visual illustration and documentation. For example, I have drawn inspiration from Jean-Martin Charcot’s photographic documents of female hysterics whom he treated as patients at the French hospital of La Salpêtrière in the late 19th century; in particular the figure of his most famous patient, known as Augustine. My research also involved studio-based investigation, such as experimentations with the performance of my own body in video format, and the contextual study of artistic and critical texts relating to contemporary media art. / The aim of this research is to demonstrate the ways in which my video performances split the body, creating an Other within one body that can be compared with the hysterical body of a patient, like Augustine, performing for her doctor. In this condition, I perform as the subject and the object of the gaze at the same time. My self-portrait is split in this way: it creates a body double, which I misrecognise as myself. But in doing so, I am both the director and the performer of the image. This is the double bind that my video work puts me into.