MICHELE ABOUD
In Michele Aboud’s latest series, all her subjects share their portrait with a fragment of a 2nd century sculpture of a young man. In a digital age, we scan any image for the quickest of clues as to what we are looking at, conditioned by our exposure to millions of images served up by society, fashion, fame and conventions. But here, it isn’t obvious that the human being portrayed in this portrait is female with her short crop of hair and beautiful but indeterminate features or male. Nor is it obvious that the classical sculpture conveys a modern impression of male, his features here are nuanced by a notion of masculinity that predates our visual conditioning by two thousand years. The aesthetic is defined by Greek classicism, as it must… what is cast in stone prevails. But there’s a double entendre of strictly modern meaning at play, Stella, Elijah, Aca and Roman are the heroes for our times.
Aboud’s sitters have included subjects from Frank Stella to Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving. Her portraits are now part of the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.
Her work has been shown in Sydney, Toronto and London in nineteen international exhibitions like Amnesty International’s Masters of Photography and the Nelson Mandela Art for AIDS Orphans.
Aboud graduated from the Photographic College of London.
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