“When I was thinking about how I could look back into the past, I was shaping my inner self again, projecting it on a picture and once again reintroducing it inside.”
—Tokyo Rumando
For her series Orphée, the Japanese artist Tokyo Rumando (b.1980) created multi-faceted self-portraits in which a round mirror functions as a porthole-like window into her subconscious. Reflected in the mirror are her memories with the artist seen in front of and inside the mirror – she is her past, present and future all at once. Tokyo Rumando created the entire series in her home, using multiple techniques and a wide range of material from wigs and appropriated images to fire and blood. Each image layer – herself in front of the mirror and the reflections in the mirror – was shot separately and then pieced together to create a photomontage, which then was re-photographed on film to produce the final work. The title was taken from Jean Cocteau’s 1950 film Orphée, which she encountered only after the completion of her series, and whose use of a mirrored portal paralleled her own. This selection of 20 self-portraits from Orphée was created for Tate Modern’s 2016 exhibition Performing for the Camera.