By Mareea Vegas:

Mareea Vegas is with Céline Sayé at Studio 541.

Today I saw my portrait…large.

"Walking into the gallery I was immediately overcome with deep emotion. So much so I felt paralysed, unable to move and stuck at the entrance of the room. I wasn’t really expecting this reaction. Even though my own face was one of 15 that confronted, the energy they accumulated was almost too much to take in. A million scattered thoughts crammed my head. These women, human beings, these beautiful mothers, the mother I never had, strong wives, strong wives, am I a good wife? Lovers... abandoned lovers...you look sad, I feel sad…who cares, I’m witnessing something very special here. A collective power that is sucking me in and filling me up. I’m seeing myself as the self I desire yet the self that I already am. My ongoing personal journey to harness and focus my own power, it’s all here right in front of me….and I simply cannot bear it. The presence eventually corralled me, embarrassed, into the room and I felt myself treading lightly, eyes skimmed the floor. I gravitated towards myself, it’s natural, but I couldn’t look me in the eye... and suddenly I’m back on a first date…feeling extremely coy and vulnerable. I’m scared to look up and see disappointment in those eyes, that I’m not what’s expected...for who, myself? Reluctant to discover what is or isn’t living behind my eyes? I’m sure I see a fleck of something I recognise… And then, as I made my way around the room, staring long and deep into the eyes of the 14 others, I found myself explaining to Celine, in detail, everything I thought that each of these people were, only to hear completely contradictory thoughts back. More than ever, in that one moment, I experienced this life as a mere projection, a single perspective...but also many perspectives, and I knew that really I know nothing at all.

Celine has created an incredibly confronting space. She has cunningly printed us slightly larger than real life, and that in itself screws with your head. We are stationed extremely close to each other, black and white, there’s no escaping us, there’s nowhere else to look.

Celine is selling these prints so if you’d like to stare into my eyes all day and night… I wont think you’re a creep, I’m pretty hot (release the hounds…)

Thank you my dear Céline for asking to me be part of this, for loving me always, I feel it, you’ve made something really special here."