Oneness Identity

THE ONENESS IDENTITY PROJECT

The Oneness Identity Project is a painting series currently being produced by Adam Russell, an artist based in Toledo, Ohio.  During the project the artist is collecting photographs and biographical information from a diverse group of people interested in participating in the creation of a body of (at least) seventy-seven contemporary, narrative portraits for the first Oneness Identity Exhibition to be completed in 2009 and exhibited in 2010. 

With the base idea of commonality, the project aims to highlight the importance and relevance of the individual in his/her own experience and complexity while simultaneously illustrating the overwhelming similarities amongst each member of the human race.  An illustration of humanity, the Oneness Identity Project, situates each subject face on to the viewer, engaging the viewer with a direct expression.  The gaze of the portrait connects the viewer to the project by including them in the process of interpreting and relating to the images associated with the expression of each portrait. To understand the purpose of the objects in each painting it is essential that the viewer bring his/her own identity as a key to unlock the meanings of each composition, this means that an act of contribution from the viewer is required to ‘get it’.  The viewer is included.

We may never fully understand another person, but it is through this process of giving and receiving, meeting, and internalizing the information another person provides to us that causes us to see our similarities.  It is from our common ground that understanding, compassion, and empathy spring.  The Oneness Identity Project is an application of this belief.

THE IDENTITIES

The individual paintings, or ‘identities’, are contemporary head and shoulder portraits augmented with images of symbolic objects, words, numbers, and meanings incorporated at the suggestion of the model.  As a requirement of participation, each model is asked to include these auxiliary portrait items with their biography information to provide the source material for their Identity painting. Sourced from the sitter’s own life, these symbolic objects create a direct relationship with the facial likeness of the subject to imply the biographical nature of these particular symbols.  The completed painting offers a brief glimpse into the life of the portrait sitter with a loose semiotic narrative to encourage an investigation and interpretation by the viewer.