This article derives from Vetja në Zhvendosje (Self in Flux), a multidisciplinary art project by Albanian visual artist Kristian Zara, launched in 2025. The project interrogates the psychic fragmentation of contemporary society’s appearance through Jungian archetypes, symbolic materiality, technological exposure, and post-dictatorship memory. Drawing on alchemical frameworks and the concept of Persona, it critiques the culture of visibility and proposes a counter-current of introspective resilience.

Situated within the broader context of Albanian social development, Self in Flux offers a poetic yet rigorous inquiry into the veiling of the self, the ethics of authenticity, and the transformative potential of art as a site of collective healing.

The self in the flux of history – Informing the project

From the far reaches of history—since ancient times—humanity has continuously spoken to us about the inner world: the non-physical realm and the vital importance of exploring it.

Across centuries, countless enquiries and efforts have been made to discover and understand the concept of the self, beginning with alchemy, philosophy, and faith, and continuing through art and psychology. One of the earliest teachings left to humankind—reappearing persistently throughout human life—is the imperative of self-knowledge: to know who you truly are.

This issue also emerges as an inner calling, one that constantly seeks the attention of the individual and, by extension, the society in which that individual shapes their integrity.

The story of the self is the story of how humankind has sought to understand what it means to be someone. Across time, cultures, and disciplines, the self has been imagined as a soul, a rational subject, a bundle of desires, a social role, and even a fleeting illusion—each age remaking it according to its own anxieties and aspirations.

In the ancient world, the self was most often associated with the soul. Egyptian thought conceived of the ka and ba—the vital and spiritual aspects of a person—surviving beyond death. In India, the Upanishads spoke of ātman, the deep self that is identical to Brahman, the absolute reality.

For Plato, the self was the immortal soul: a charioteer struggling to guide the horses of reason and desire, destined for the realm of ideas. Aristotle, more pragmatic, saw the soul as the form of the body—the principle of life and thought, inseparable from matter.

Later, Stoicism taught that the true self lies in rationality, aligned with the logos of the universe, cultivating virtue and inner freedom.

Already, we see a tension between transcendence and immanence—between the self as eternal essence and as embodied activity.

So, the principal question also evolves over time. It moves from spirit to matter, then to hierarchical complexes—with the Renaissance rediscovering classical humanism and celebrating the dignity of man—and onwards to neuroscience, which often treats the self as an emergent property of brain processes, perhaps even a useful illusion.

As we see, the self is a history of mirrors: each age finds its own reflection in how it defines personhood. From soul to subject, from essence to performance, the self remains both the most intimate and the most elusive of concepts—a question we never cease to ask, because in asking it, we become it.

The artist’s perspective, core to the artistic exploration

Amid the pressure of rapid change and the fragmentation of human life—where psychic tensions erupt into the physical realm, displacing one another under the hypnosis of visibility—the artist offers a personal perspective on the question of the self.

This gesture sparks a counter-current of remembrance and reflection within our techno-seized present, resisting the flattening of identity and reawakening the inner gaze.

This project’s idea does not arise solely from an artistic counterpoint to some life happenings related to societal and individual behaviours, or the place where I live. This idea could not help but intertwine with deep personal life-perceiving experiences, memories, and various events—influenced by the nature of my inner world. Moreover, my individual pursuit of psychic depth—of knowing the unknown—and especially the impossibility of rationalising the most difficult phenomena arising from human relationships of any kind have prompted the initiation of an interdisciplinary artistic inquiry.

Regardless of the many definitions surrounding “the self”—a concept that has always been, and will continue to be, a subject of inquiry across diverse schools of thought and philosophical traditions—I understand the self as a fluid entity.

Yet the clearest way to connect with the essence of what I’m engaging with in this idea is through the term “self”, for its familiarity and immediacy.

Given how rigid and entrenched our perceptual mechanisms are when it comes to psychic discourse, the word 'self' offers a direct link to the idea’s core.

Still, from my perspective, many of us struggle profoundly with the practice of self-knowledge.

Contributing factors include education systems, consumerism, the digitalisation of the mind, and a profit-driven culture that continues to rise unchecked.

The self is, undeniably, a deeply complex and multifaceted dimension of human composition. Within it, countless elements transmit across time—history, memory, genetics, experience—tiny fragments of information that continuously flow within, shaping its growth and interaction with the outer world.

Among these elements, one stands out to me as substantive and central to the individual: authenticity—what I often call originality.

It is precisely this quality that renders us distinguishable from one another, revealing the unique imprint each person carries—a special ingredient that cannot be replicated.

On the one hand, authenticity is a seeker of truth—its echoing activity calls the human to descend from the mental surface into psychic depth, to know himself.

On the other hand, for decades, humanity has appeared largely seduced by the superficial image of the self. It is enough to observe, with honest eyes, the histories of oppression, success, and war to discern the masking form that casts the self into shadow. As we observe more consistently, a dominant model of being emerges within our collective behaviour—one that aligns with the concept of Persona.

To me, the dominance of this false image—becoming not only a façade but a lifestyle in the physical world—suggests that in the non-physical realm, Persona is grasping the entirety of self-existence more forcefully than any other archetype primarily powering the human psyche.

Archetypes are inherited contents of the collective unconscious. They operate autonomously, without bearing intrinsic notions of good or bad.

At their root, archetypes exist to serve the generational cycle—this is nature’s work, though humanity has often mismanaged it.

Yet archetypes can take sides when consciously embraced by the individual. Like all archetypes, Persona functions in this way.

If Persona does not seize space within the individual's inner activity, there remains room for the self to act authentically in the physical world.

Conversely, when Persona is over-embraced, it leads to a darkening of the self and its authentic compound. In such conditions, the individual acts primarily in response to the dominant demands—whether good or bad—of the culture and society in which they live. When originality is denied space, sincerity is devalued. The fall of each inner faculty then distorts spiritual activity, potentially leading to psychic disintegration.

Even though Persona enables us to adapt and function within collective life, those who have deeply explored the psyche—such as Jung, Hillman, and others—have warned against over-identification with it. As Jung cautioned, “A rigid persona can cause severe psychological tension” (1953), pointing to the inner strain that arises when the mask becomes mistaken for the self.

Eventually, growing through such a psychic state, the individual becomes a submissive object—ruled by the fear of survival and rendered powerless to be themselves. This occurs despite the paradox that the individual simultaneously creates society, and society, in turn, births the individual.

Even when fragments of the true self begin to surface, they are swiftly concealed by the individual, who has already conformed with societal deviation from the inner truth. The failure to initiate the search for self-knowledge—and the political system that reinforces this avoidance—has rendered self-censorship a normalised condition, enslaved within our technocratic dominance.

The paradox of seeing blindly

The technocratic world we are currently promoting adds yet another layer to the ongoing fragmentation of the true self. It sells a new mask—just one more among the many already constructed and commodified over decades. As a result, much of society becomes mesmerised by the lust for temporality, driven by narcissistic energies that promise quick rewards in this digitalising world. It seems that many have come to misunderstand human existence as something achieved only through collective conformation. Yet this dominant part of society appears blind with open eyes before something essential: the continuous covering of the true self.

The erasure of originality as a distinctive ingredient brings deeper disturbances to psychic flow. These non-physical problems are far more difficult to resolve when they begin to dominate the totality and balance of the inner world.

The paradox of this aspect of culture and practice reveals that we tend to address problems only after we’ve created them—once they become tangible and impossible to ignore. For decades, society has imposed a culture of pressure and expectation upon its members, undervaluing sincerity and authenticity.

When we consider the real consequences in everyday life—not the polished clichés—individuals are pushed to cultivate a self for sale, rather than a self that cultivates the world. Over time, this trend leads to the veiling of the true self beneath a false one, conforming to a collectively constructed bunker that conceals authenticity.

Closing thought

In this sense, the history of the self becomes inseparable from the history of art. Each mask, each gesture, each material carries the trace of transformation—the inner world striving to find its form in the outer.

What I seek in my work is not to answer the questions that arise from the project “Self in Flux”, nor to preserve a singular identity, but to cultivate a dialogue between myth and matter, between artist and society.

As stated at the beginning of this article, the project proposes a counter-current activity aimed at abolishing the prevailing culture of appearance.

By unfolding the persona and the substance that holds it, the self may reclaim a state that is neither eternal nor fleeting but alchemical—a process of becoming through images, symbols, and the weight of materials. In returning to matter—to the tactile and the archetypal—art resists the digital eclipse of presence and reclaims the self as something that breathes, fractures, and endures in transformation.

Finally, I would like to conclude by affirming: human culture and the civilised world of physical matter derive from the nature of the inner world.

Everything humanity has built and continues to develop in the tangible realm is a consequential manifestation of its psychic activity.

The project is supported by the Swiss Cultural Fund, a project of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

References

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Han, Byung-Chul. The Transparency Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015.
Hillman, James. Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
Jung, Carl Gustav. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. 2nd ed. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.
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