44AD artspace’s Annual Open Summer Show ‘eighthwonder’ Law of Identity

44AD Art Gallery and Artists Studios, Bath, UK

3 August – 13 August 2017

curator: Nina Jesih

The first, most fundamental law of thought, according to the philosopher Aristotle, is the LAW OF IDENTITY: ‘A thing is identical with itself’.

A thing is what it is, it cannot be a different thing. No two things can be exactly the same.

Identity seems like a paradoxical idea – to be identical to something is to be the same, but to have an identity is to be unique. These two objects are identical, but I am not the same as anyone else, described Will Barton, a communication psychologist.

Human identity is constructed in many ways. The world is full of people, who channel their own identity into everyday life. Be it is as individual expressions of character; through spirituality, culture, intellect and materialism. As a group through nationality, religion and politics. Or perhaps via object and industry – directing the veneer of corporate branding.

However, what do we actually mean, when we classify something as identity? What does this broad concept of existing as someone or something in particular, mean?

The more we think about identity, the more we wonder just what it is. The more we think about our identity, the less we are sure who we are.

I am not one and simple, but complex and many. Virginia Woolf, The Waves

As an international curator, Nina Jesih gathered the artworks from all around the world, which try to show what identity means to different individuals.

And what does it mean to you?