Self Portrait/ There’s Someone in My Head… /

Self Portrait / There’s Someone in My Head…is an immersive installation exploring the fractured nature of identity through a Jungian lens.

Four large, hand-crafted effigies occupy the room, animated by projected fragments of Ian Phillips-McLaren — his image, his gestures, his voice. Each represents one of Jung’s core archetypes:

• The Anima/Animus – two conjoined heads locked in a relentless back-and-forth, volleying words like a tennis match.

• The Persona – brash and performative, loudly recounting its triumphs.

• The Shadow – a restless, globe-like form with a deep, resonant heartbeat, embodying the mind’s driving force — the wellspring of creativity and the seat of our darker impulses.

• The Self – quieter, grounded, speaking plainly of lived experience.

They talk over one another, each performing its own truth, confessional and performative, colliding in a shifting chorus of thought. As you move through them, the effigies seem almost to breathe — a fractured, uncanny mirror of your own inner dialogue.

By exposing the mechanics of the work — the seams between projection, sculpture, and voice — Phillips-McLaren denies the comfort of illusion. Instead, the installation invites viewers to stand inside a shifting psychological space, face-to-face with the unstable boundaries between mask, shadow, and authentic self.