Article: Gillian Wearing, private I: in her first U.S. museum show, Wearing investigates the complexities of identity, probing the "truth" of self-disclosure, via portrait photographs and videos that employ masks, overdubbing and lip-synching.(video installation at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois)(Critical Essay)

A big photographic Self-Portrait (2000) introduced a wonderful survey of Gillian Wearing's work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, but she's not giving much away: her face is almost completely concealed behind a generic plastic mask. It has eyeholes, but the mouth is sealed shut. Not that Wearing is averse to other people baring their souls. On the contrary, the majority of her work, most of it in video, gives its subjects the chance to tell stories that are at minimum personal, and usually deeply revealing, even shameful. They, too, are allowed to obscure their identities, by drunkenness, or putting on masks or uniforms. But inevitably, they disclose a great ...

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