Alena Solomonova's Multiplicity begins with a premise this issue has circled from the start: the self is not a stable thing to be captured but an event that must be performed, tested, undone. What distinguishes her approach is method. She doesn't digitally manipulate her portraits; she physically intervenes on them. Glass panes stack and scratch. Paper crumples and tears. Thread stitches across the photographic surface. Colored tissue and pigment interrupt the gray tones of skin. The face remains, but it is no longer sovereign.

By self I mean the visible surface that claims to represent an interior. Solomonova treats that surface as construction site. In one image, the face floats behind stacked transparencies, each layer adding distance and noise until the features soften into approximation. In another, a torn rectangle isolates the eyes while erasing mouth, chin, context. Thread sutures the image or censors it; the difference isn't always clear. Geometric color blocks map one face like a system that doesn't quite apply. The body, when it appears, holds still and withholds.

The recurring figure across these eight photographs is recognizably hers. Yet no two images propose the same person. Likeness is a starting point, not a destination. What matters is the pressure applied after the shutter closes, when the photograph becomes material again: paper that can be crumpled, surface that can be cut, plane that can be stitched through. The face persists behind every interference. Not triumphant. Patient.

There is an echo here of early photomontage, but the tone is cooler, more interior. These aren't polemics. They are quiet studies in what survives obstruction. To look at Multiplicity is to watch recognition approach and withdraw, approach and withdraw. The self appears. It doesn't resolve.