Curators Claire Koron Elat and Shelly Reich are bringing F1lthy, Kristoffer Borgli, Sonny Hall and more together in Paris to explore the strange art of becoming yourself.

We’ve never been more obsessed with ourselves. We photograph ourselves, edit ourselves, dress for the camera, curate our personalities and call it authenticity. Somewhere between the front-facing camera and the person staring back at us, the distinction between who we are and who we want to be starts to dissolve. But what if narcissism isn’t simply about loving yourself too much? What if it’s about understanding yourself as something you can create?

For Claire Koron Elat and Shelly Reich, the curatorial duo behind angels.sc3 and former founders and directors of 032c Gallery, this question sits at the heart of their latest exhibition. Having previously worked with names including Gerhard Richter, Martin Margiela, Jon Rafman, Fai Khadra and Aus Taylor, the pair have developed a practice that moves freely between art, fashion, music and the cultural spaces in between.

Taking Boris Groys’ essay Self-Design, or Productive Narcissism as a point of departure, their latest project brings together an unexpected cast of image-makers: Playboi Carti collaborator and producer F1lthy, filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli, poet and model Sonny Hall, 550BC’s Pouria Khojastehpay, Noémie Ninot and Yury Belyavskiy. On view at Kramer in Paris from September 28 to October 1, during Paris Fashion Week, the exhibition considers a world in which images no longer simply reflect reality, but actively produce it.

From the performance of authenticity to the peculiar intimacy of being watched, we caught up with Claire and Shelly to talk about the art of self-invention, fashion’s complicated relationship with identity, and why sometimes the most honest thing you can do is admit that you’re making it all up.

Duygu Bengi: Boris Groys’ essay Self-Design, or Productive Narcissism serves as one of the starting points for the exhibition. Groys suggests that today, individuals are no longer simply themselves but have become producers of their own image. What initially drew you to this idea? Did working on the exhibition make you reconsider your own relationship with identity and self-presentation?

Shelly Lea Reich: What initially drew us to the idea was the fact that self-design is no longer something external. It has become part of everyday life. We are constantly making decisions about how we appear, how we are photographed, what we share, what we hide, even how we want to be perceived by people we may never meet.

Working on the exhibition made us more aware of how natural this process has become. As curators, we are also constantly constructing narratives and images around artists, exhibitions, and ourselves. So there is a certain contradiction there: we are questioning self-design while participating in it. We don’t necessarily see that as a problem. The interesting question for us is what happens when we become conscious of ourselves as a medium.

Exhibition view, *Poupée de Peau*, Alo Galerie, Paris, 2026.
Photo: Bellise Perrin

Exhibition view, *Poupée de Peau*, Alo Galerie, Paris, 2026.
Photo: Noémie Ninot

Claire Koron Elat: What was fascinating about Groys was the shift from identity as something we possess to identity as something we produce. It makes the self much more active, but also much more unstable.

The exhibition didn’t lead us to a conclusion about whether this is good or bad. It made us more attentive to the mechanics of it. We are all editing ourselves constantly, sometimes very consciously and sometimes almost automatically. The exhibition became a space to look at that process rather than simply criticize it.

Duygu: The exhibition text raises a particularly compelling question: “What happens when the image becomes more convincing than the person?” Do you think the images we create of ourselves have begun to overshadow who we really are, or has identity always been a form of constructed representation?

Claire: We think identity has always been constructed to some degree. Clothes, gestures, photographs, the way we speak—all of these things have always communicated something about who we are. What has changed is the speed and scale. There is now an almost continuous feedback loop between the person and their image.

Sometimes the image can actually become the more stable version of the self. Someone may know us primarily through photographs, through a screen, through an image that has been carefully constructed. At a certain point, we have to ask which version is more “real”—the person or the representation.

Shelly: We don’t think there is necessarily a pure person hidden behind the image waiting to be discovered. That’s perhaps too romantic. The image is also part of us.

What interests us is the moment when the representation starts producing the reality. We post an image of ourselves as a certain kind of person, and then we begin to behave according to that image. We create the character, but the character also starts creating us.

“We are not only dressing for the physical world; we are dressing for the camera, for the archive, for the feed.”

– Claire Koron Elat

Duygu: Today, authenticity has almost become a marketing strategy, particularly within fashion and social media. Do you think it is still possible to be truly authentic in a world where everything is so consciously constructed? Or could openly embracing artificiality be a new form of honesty?

Claire: We find the obsession with authenticity quite interesting because authenticity itself has become an aesthetic. The “natural” photograph, the casual image, the supposedly unfiltered personality—all of these can be incredibly constructed.

Maybe the more honest position is not to pretend that we are outside of construction. Artificiality doesn’t necessarily mean something is false. A performance can reveal something very real about us.

Shelly: Exactly. We don’t think authenticity means the absence of construction. We are always constructing something. Even choosing not to construct an image is still a choice.

There can be something liberating about acknowledging the artificiality. Once we stop trying to prove that something is authentic, we can actually become much more playful with identity.

Duygu: Do you think the visual identities we construct eventually begin to shape our behaviour, desires, and even the choices we make?

Claire: Absolutely. We think the relationship works in both directions. We construct an image because we want to communicate something, but once that image exists, we also start responding to it ourselves.

If we repeatedly present ourselves as a certain person, we may eventually begin making choices that support that version of ourselves. The image becomes almost like a script.

Shelly: And there is also the gaze of other people. We don’t construct ourselves in isolation. We anticipate how an image will be received, and that anticipation influences what we do next.

So self-design is not only about narcissism. It’s also about negotiation—with other people, with platforms, with social expectations, and increasingly with algorithms.

“Self-design is not only about narcissism. It’s also about negotiation—with other people, with platforms, with social expectations, and increasingly with algorithms.”

– Shelly Lea Reich

Duygu: The exhibition brings together figures from different disciplines, including music, cinema, fashion, and visual art. What connects F1lthy, Kristoffer Borgli, Sonny Hall, Pouria Khojastehpay, Noémie Ninot, and Yury Belyavskiy within this particular conceptual framework? How did the selection of artists come together?

Shelly: We weren’t interested in creating a thematic exhibition where everyone was simply illustrating the same idea. The connections are much more intuitive. Each of these figures has a particular relationship to image-making, identity, performance, or visibility, but they approach it from completely different positions.

That difference was important to us. F1lthy, for example, operates through music and a very specific cultural image; Kristoffer Borgli works through cinema and questions of perception and social desire; other artists approach the body, fashion, photography, or digital culture differently. Together they create a kind of constellation.

Claire: Yes, it was more about affinity than category. We were looking for practices that somehow understand identity as material—something that can be manipulated, performed, photographed, circulated, or transformed.

The exhibition isn’t trying to flatten these disciplines into one language. In fact, we wanted their differences to remain visible.

Duygu: It is particularly interesting to see figures such as F1lthy, a producer who has helped shape the sound and visual culture of contemporary music, and Kristoffer Borgli, whose films explore identity, perception, and social expectations, participating in the exhibition. Why is it important for you to bring creative voices from outside the traditional art world into an exhibition context?

Claire: Because contemporary culture doesn’t really respect the boundaries that institutions sometimes impose. An idea can emerge through a music video, a film, a photograph, a fashion image, or an artwork. Why should the exhibition space pretend otherwise?

Shelly: Exactly. We think the traditional division between “artist” and “creative” has become increasingly difficult to maintain. Some of the most influential images today are produced outside the conventional art system.

For us, bringing these voices together is also a way of reflecting how people actually experience culture now. We don’t experience art, fashion, music, cinema, and social media as completely separate worlds. They constantly overlap.

Duygu: The exhibition underlines that a photograph does not simply document something that has happened; it can also cause something to happen. How did this idea influence your selection and presentation of the works? Do you hope visitors will leave the exhibition questioning their own relationship with their image?

Shelly: That idea was very important to us. A photograph isn’t necessarily the end of an event—it can be the beginning of one. Once an image exists, it enters circulation. It changes how someone is perceived and potentially how they perceive themselves.

We would love for visitors to leave thinking about their own images, but not in a moralistic way. More like: Who are we when we look at ourselves through a camera? And who are we when someone else looks at us?

Claire: The photograph can be performative. It doesn’t simply say “this is what happened”; it can produce a new reality around the person or object being photographed.

That’s why we were interested in works that don’t feel purely documentary. They create situations, fantasies, expectations, or even new versions of the self.

*Kim Kardashian’s Remains(2024) Noémie Ninot*

Duygu: In recent years, collaborations between fashion brands and the art world have become increasingly visible. However, these partnerships are sometimes perceived as little more than a way of generating cultural prestige. What do you think it takes for a fashion brand to establish a genuinely meaningful relationship with art? What turns a collaboration into a truly creative exchange?

Shelly: For us, it comes down to whether both sides are actually willing to give something up. If the art is simply being used as decoration or cultural validation, you can usually feel it immediately.

A meaningful collaboration should allow something unexpected to happen. The brand should bring its own language, resources, and audience, while the artist or curator brings a different way of thinking. There should be some friction between the two.

Claire: We think the most interesting collaborations don’t feel completely seamless. There should be a moment where the two worlds challenge each other.

When there is genuine curiosity rather than simply a desire for cultural capital, the result can become much more than branding. It can produce a new form or a new context that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.

“The photograph can be performative. It doesn’t simply say ‘this is what happened’; it can produce a new reality around the person or object being photographed.”

– Claire Koron Elat

Duygu: Fashion is perhaps one of the most direct expressions of self-design. What we wear, where we are seen, and how we photograph ourselves have all become part of our identities. Do you think fashion still offers a space for individual expression and freedom, or has it increasingly become a system in which we feel compelled to constantly manage our own image?

Claire: We think it does both. Fashion can be incredibly liberating because it allows us to try on identities. We can become someone else for an evening and discover something about ourselves through that transformation.

But at the same time, fashion is now deeply connected to visibility. We are not only dressing for the physical world; we are dressing for the camera, for the archive, for the feed. That changes the psychology of getting dressed.

Shelly: And we think that tension is productive. Fashion has always been about self-invention, but now the invention is documented almost immediately.

We don’t just wear something—we create an image of ourselves wearing it. That image can circulate independently of us. We find that both exciting and slightly strange.

Duygu: Today, we are all simultaneously producers of our own images and spectators of other people’s. How do you think this constant exchange of gazes transforms our identities?

Shelly: It creates a kind of internalized audience. Even when we’re alone, we’re often imagining ourselves from the outside. We think about how something will look before we experience it.

But we don’t necessarily think that’s entirely negative. Being conscious of the gaze can also give us agency. We can play with it, manipulate it, refuse it, or exaggerate it.

Claire: And the gaze is no longer one-directional. We are constantly looking and being looked at, producing and consuming simultaneously.

We think that makes identity much more fluid, but also more exhausting. There is always the possibility of another version of ourselves being produced.

Exhibition view, *Poupée de Peau*, Alo Galerie, Paris, 2026.
Photo: Noémie Ninot

Duygu: I would like to return to one of the ideas expressed in the exhibition statement: “Maybe narcissism isn’t about loving yourself too much. Maybe it’s about understanding that yourself is a medium.” Do you think the need to constantly reinvent and reproduce ourselves has become an unavoidable condition of contemporary life, or is it still possible to step outside this cycle?

Claire: We don’t think we can completely step outside it. We live within systems of representation, and to some extent we are all participating in them.

But perhaps the important thing is to become conscious of the mechanism. Once we understand ourselves as a medium, we can start asking what we want to transmit, what we want to withhold, and who we are transmitting it to.

Shelly: We agree. We’re not particularly interested in escaping self-design. We think that’s almost impossible, and perhaps not even desirable.

What interests us is becoming more conscious of the fact that we are designing ourselves. There can be freedom in that awareness. Instead of asking, “Is this the real me?”, maybe we can ask, “What are we making possible through this version of ourselves?”

“Even when we’re alone, we’re often imagining ourselves from the outside.”

– Shelly Lea Reich

Duygu: In an age when we are constantly producing and consuming images, what kind of image still has the power to make you stop and really look?

Shelly: Probably an image that doesn’t give you everything immediately. We’re interested in images that retain some opacity—where you feel there is something you haven’t understood yet.

With so much imagery being designed to communicate instantly, an image that resists immediate consumption can become very powerful. It asks you to spend time with it rather than simply recognize it.

Claire: For us, it’s an image that creates a small disturbance. Something slightly ambiguous, seductive, uncomfortable, or difficult to place.

Maybe the strongest image is not necessarily the one that tells you the most, but the one that makes you look twice.Shelly: And perhaps that’s what we ultimately wanted the exhibition to do—not tell people how they should think about their image, but make them notice that they are looking, and that they are also being looked at.

Arts & Culture