“Performance of Self” is a photographic reflection on the spectacular aspects of everyday life.

Based on Guy Debord’s concept of spectacle: spectacle is the dominant structure of modern society, a system in which direct, lived human experience is replaced by its representation. The project explores how people demonstrate their lives and identities in the form of carefully constructed images. Within this framework, gestures, behaviour and choices are shaped by the expectation of being seen, interpreted and acknowledged.The project raises the theme of subtle oppression, inherent in everyday performativity, as individuals are compelled to conform to constructed images and external expectations. It shows how the dominance of appearance over essence leads to personal and systemic decline.

The central part of the project is a series of 12 photographs, each dedicated to a particular sphere of everyday life: appearance, work, leisure, and others. Through constructed scenes, the photographs explore how everyday life is influenced by images, symbolic signs, and scripted social behavior.

The visual part of the project is accompanied by a publication that reveals its theoretical basis. The text talks about Guy Debord’s ideas on spectcale and Karl Marx’s concept of alienation. It also gives examples of spectacle on a global level: cases where administrative, political, and aesthetic ambitions, the desire for impressive reports, loud headlines, and attractive narratives lead to devastating consequences for people’s lives. Particular attention is paid to how language, numerical indicators and visual aesthetics are used not so much to reflect reality as to construct and subjugate it. In addition, the publication includes comments on the visual choices of the project.

Together, the exhibition and publication offered a lens through which to view everyday life,  not as a neutral reality, but as a space structured by images, expectations, and systems of representation.