The work of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) is integral to the conceptualisation of self in relation to language, time, narrative and otherness. The proposed installation, Self as Construction, finds inspiration in a number of his works – among them, The Rule of Metaphor (1975), Oneself as Another (1990) and Time and Narrative (1983-84). It seeks to provide dynamic figuration for that inspiration, prompting viewers to find reflected, and to themselves (re)create in their minds and in their experience of the installation, their own stories and self-understanding. That it does so in the context of the surrounding art works within MUŻA, with which it enters into dialogue and interaction, only adds to the richness and nuances of that dynamic figuration. 

Riceour’s interest in the connection between language and experience is well-known. In The Rule of Metaphor he drew attention to how that connection operates at the level of word and phrase. He reflected on what he referred to as ‘one-word tropes’, or tropes “properly speaking” and tropes consisting of several words’, linking his discussion to age-old philosophical conundrums on the relation between ‘literal’ and ‘spiritual’ meaning. Self as Construction is an exploration of this connection between word, tropology, semantics and time. It is built around words and phrases of singular evocative power, both in themselves and in their (re)framing relation with the artworks on display in MUŻA. 

Individually and collectively, we construct ourselves in the narratives of self that we seek to put together. We frame these narratives in terms of time, and so we create self by reflecting who we are in the past, in the present and who we would like to be in the future. The works and words, images and self-imaging, figure and refiguration in Self as Construction are a reflection on, and re-enactment of, that process. They express, illustrate, reinstall autobiographical experience – the artist’s, the viewer’s, the nation’s – provoking revisited and fresh understandings of self and other.