Typeface from Type Face

Typeface from Type Face explores how cognition destabilizes when we encounter unfamiliar cultural contexts, particularly in the act of recognizing faces. The project begins with the “interracial effect,” which describes the brain’s difficulty in distinguishing faces outside its habitual visual environment. It also draws on Lacan’s concept of the gaze, where recognition is never neutral but shaped by the viewer’s desires and cultural frameworks.
The work constructs an alphabet derived from facial features. Each letter corresponds to an element of the face, allowing participants to assemble or disassemble identities. This system turns the face into a field of signs, echoing post-linguistic structures that detach meaning from fixed forms. Influenced by Deleuze’s idea of nomadic structures, the alphabet resists stable classification and moves fluidly across possibilities.
Through this shifting system, identities become provisional and exchangeable. Participants rewrite faces as they rewrite language, revealing how the self and the other are always in motion, continually reconstructed through perception.

D: Yuan Xu
Interactive workshop, paper, pencils, video
2024