Wearing Signs

Gillian Wearing is an English conceptual artist who experiments with cracking the veneer of judgments we see everyone through. Identity is a performance, and everyone plays multiple characters depending on who their audience is. From her social experimental photography and videos to her self-portraits, Wearing explores the widening gap that exists between our public and private selves—the ways in which we are externally and internally perceived. We seem to wear glasses we can never really take off, but what do we do when the masks we wear begin to feel like our own skin? Often compared to artists such as Diane Arbus, Walker Evans, August Sander, and I would go so far as to say Cindy Sherman, Wearing’s work is described as being psychological and experimental, a cross between street photography, performance art, and anthropology. 

In one of Wearing’s earliest series’ Signs That Say What You Want Them to Say and Not Signs That Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say (1992–93), she approached over 500 strangers on the streets of London asking them to “write down something that was in their head” and to photograph them holding up the message. One young girl on a busy street bashfully smiles as she looks beyond the camera’s frame and holds a sign that says I hate this world!! A black policeman in uniform with his face shadowed by his hat holds a message that says HELP. A young, bald man with his sweater partly unzipped to reveal his chest coyly smiles into the camera and admits that In this emptiness women are an answer for me. Most famously, a young, blonde gentleman in a business suit smirks and reveals I’m desperate.

According to a scientific study, all it takes is a tenth of a second to form an impression of a stranger, but Wearing’s photographs bring attention to how skewed our impressions of people can be. The series brims with irony as the polaroids juxtapose faces and bodies with signs that are not symmetrical to our snap-judgments of the people holding them. Using graphology, we can also form judgments based on their handwriting, similar to the way we might judge someone’s horoscope. This article claims that people who write in all caps are “independent-minded” and “defiant,” implying the idea that each of these four strangers feel like outsiders to a world in which they are trying to find their place. 

A seemingly happy young girl hates this world and uses two exclamation marks to emphasize her frustration with it. A policeman who is expected to help others is in need of help himself, writing in capitalized letters that fill the entire page as if crying out to be heard. A young man who appears to be wearing a wedding band on his ring finger admits to utilizing women to fill an internal void. Finally, a young, smug businessman who looks well-put together discloses his desperation. 

Throughout her career, Wearing has played with the attraction of anonymity and the liberation that comes with it in a world where we’ve all felt gravely misunderstood and at some point have felt like imposters of ourselves. “But above all, I really love people who go through life without compromise and stick to their character, even when it means they remain unemployed, or they don't have any friends or relationships” Wearing says in an Artspace interview. “In a world which is willing to be elastic, they stick resolutely to this one path, this fixed belief in themselves. We all have a certain madness about us and these people don't mind showing it. Which leads me to believe that the most insane thing you can ever do is try to be sane.”

During my senior year of high school, I had a similar craving to Wearing to shed some light on my jaded view of humanity, to bring people together in a city where we are all physically feet apart but mentally miles away. For my thesis, I developed a social experiment entitled Dear Stranger: An Open Letter to New York (2016) in which I asked strangers to anonymously handwrite letters to each other. Inspired by projects such as Postsecret, Humans of New York, and The Strangers Project along with my own desperation to cope with the pulsating pain caused by the recent passing of my father, I couldn’t help but think to myself What better way to grieve than to commence a study on the grievances of others?

I, like Wearing, was surprised by what I discovered. Strangers bonded over lost loves and heartaches, missed opportunities and regrets. This singular epistolic conversation took on many forms, but one observation that remained consistent was the compassion and optimism strangers expressed towards each other, as if in writing to a stranger they were simultaneously reassuring themselves. “There is a lot of humanity in the world,” says Wearing in this recent interview with Wallpaper. The below excerpts pulled from various letters show how this single chain of anonymous letters reads like an intimate conversation between close friends. 

Hard to believe that a few months ago, I thought my life was over. I had a beautiful relationship with a wonderful man, his two beautiful kids, and we were about to build our house on a quiet piece of land. And then he left me for another woman. As hard as it was, I discovered that it was meant to be.

One of the best realizations in life is suddenly understanding that things always turn out in some way or another, that you always end up where you’re meant to be just when it should be so.

If it were up to me, I’d be different. I once had hope in a dream that was eaten alive by you. The ones you try and save can sometimes kill you.

You’re right, sometimes we want to save the wrong people. But it speaks volumes about your character… Love again because someone out there is going to need it and you’ll be there because you’re still here.

I think what hurts me the most is knowing I’m not as loved as I love others.

Being ignored, discounted, overlooked, or not included has always been difficult for me to deal with.

I don’t know if it’s okay to fall in love with friends, but I hope it doesn’t change everything.

Don’t refuse any futures because you’re stuck on your past.

If I could change one major event in my life, it would be to have walked away with my head held high after being the victim of domestic violence the first time. 1 in 4 experience domestic violence and it crosses all socioeconomic boundaries. It doesn’t discriminate on race, wealth, status, or religion. I am grateful for the forgiveness in my heart.

Equality for women can free men also.

Maybe it’s time to stop thinking about whether ‘America’ is one way or another, and trying to see the refugee in all of us, the friend in all of us.

Global citizens can have the American Dream almost anywhere they choose. America is at a tipping point where change and revolution is inevitable. People lose their limbs in battle all of the time and can often experience phantom pain. There are studies that can retrain amputees’ minds to overcome that pain… My point is that it is okay to lose and break down and from that become stronger.

I had to give up dancing recently for about 4 months. Caused a lot of frustration and sadness, but I learned so much about my own body in the process of recovering from my injury that I think I will be a better dancer because of it.

I know what it’s like to give up something you love for a period of time. The whole time you wonder if you’re losing sight of who you really are and wonder if the sacrifices are worth it.

Giving up shouldn’t be a choice we have.

It’s really hard to overcome fear, especially when we grow up being afraid of who we truly are.

It can be so scary to be yourself, and scary when you don’t even know what that ‘self’ is. Sometimes I find it easier to find myself through talking to others, through listening to their stories, through understanding who they are.

My mom gives me hope. As someone who has often felt confused and lost looking at all of the confused and lost adults in the world, having a mother that always seems to know where she is going and always has a smile on her face is so uplifting.

In this massive melting pot of a city, I, too, find myself bumping into the strangest mood swings. Can’t people just throw away their anxieties into a box full of poems that describe their stories, intricate as it may be?

It is easy to stereotype, but at the end of it all, we’re all made from the same stuff and we all live on the same giant rock spinning round the same sun.

My favourite spot in the city is the subway network. Nowhere in particular, just somewhere—anywhere, really—along the labyrinth that connects us all.

I wish the people around me on a daily basis were more open to interaction with strangers.

The world needs a little more eye contact.