Deborah Wasserman
Plurabelle, 2017
Acrylic, ink, and collage on paper
14" x 11"
 
The portrait series Plurabelle‚ named for James Joyce‚ and Anna Livia Plurabelle‚ presents women as fragmented, hybrid collages assembled from shifting points of view. Sourced from glossy publications and layered with paint, washes, and marks, the faces oscillate between cohesion and dissolution. Multiple eyes and features surface and recede, suggesting identities shaped by movement, adaptation, and encounter. These figures function less as fixed portraits than as mutable terrains‚ psychological and cultural landscapes formed through migration and belonging. Through processes of layering, erasure, and transparency, the work proposes identity as fluid, provisional, and continuously in formation.