The Self As Multiplicity With Claude Cahun

Claude Cahun approached self portraiture as an experiment, using costume, doubling, and contradiction to resist fixed identity. Cahun’s work was explicitly antifascist, challenging authoritarianism through refusal, disguise, and multiplicity. Cahun’s practice continues to shape how artists use the camera to explore gender, performance, and the plural self.

Claude Cahun (1894–1954) was a French surrealist photographer, writer, and political activist whose self portraits quietly but radically challenged ideas of identity, gender, and authorship long before those conversations were common. Alongside their lifelong collaborator and partner, Marcel Moore, Cahun created staged self portraits throughout the early 20th century that approached identity as something constructed, performed, and in flux.

Cahun’s work was not fully recognized for its depth and importance until much later, a reminder that art can both take time to be received and speak across time depending on societal contexts.

What pluralities do you hold?
How might art making become a portal for multiplicity?