Laura Jacobs
Who Am I Now? This Is Now
The work I have started during lockdown is very personal, and I don’t know how I feel about showing it — it is almost like showing my diary! In fact it is a visual diary. The work is all about memory, longing. I’ve been thinking about ageing, and the grief and sadness that I no longer look anything like I did as the beautiful, glowing, nubile young woman of my youth. I am getting to know myself exactly as I am right now — warts and all, with all my imperfections and marks and scars of life. It has been making me question what beauty really is. I am not that beautiful young woman anymore; but now, what is going on inside me and outside me are aligned, whereas when I was young I was presenting one thing to the world while inside was a mass of chaos and insecurity. I have taken the opportunity of this precious space and time to go inwards, to feel and look and get to know myself in a way I haven’t before. I am getting the chance to re-narrate the story I have been telling myself for so long, and I am beginning to see that then and now does not have to be a direct comparison. I am not two people, I am one.
