Death and Rebirth: 3D Printed Women Portraits by Sophie Kahn

by: Keni Li , November 10, 2025

Over the past millennium, the concept of the self-portrait has evolved far beyond the confines of traditional painting and sculpture, embracing a wide array of media, including photography, video, performance, 3D sculpture, and augmented reality. Early self-portraits were predominantly rendered on enduring materials such as metal and stone (Hall 2015: 16). By the mid-14^th century, when the earliest known female self-portraits—illustrations in Giovanni Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris (On Famous Women, c. 1355-1359)—emerged, canvas and paper had become the predominant media for self-representation (Borzello 2016: 22).

The materials employed in women’s self-portraits can, to a significant extent, be interpreted as an outward expression of ideological positions. Since the 1970s, feminist artists have been ‘keen to create signature aesthetics through the use of new materials’ (Battista 2019: 35). In Deep Contact (1984-1989), Lynn Hershman Leeson explored the potential of constructing a female self-portrait through interactive video installation. Similarly, Carole Schneeman’s Interior Scroll (1975) transforms the body itself into a canvas, illustrating the expansive potential of performance art in female self-representation. While scholarly discourse has traditionally focused more on the content than the materiality of women’s self-portraits, I argue that works employing cutting-edge technologies are not merely formal innovations. Instead, they possess the capacity to challenge entrenched ideals of femininity, disrupt traditional gender roles, interrogate personal narratives, and subvert binary conceptions of gendered bodies.

British Australian sculptor and digital artist Sophie Kahn’s 3D sculptures, AR/VR portraits, and videos exemplify a transformative reimagining of contemporary female self-portraiture in the digital age. Initially studying fine art at Goldsmiths, University of London, Kahn later shifted her focus to 3D sculpture during her MFA in Art and Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her recent works—Machines for Suffering (2018), Transfigured (2020-2024), Dematerialized (2021), Torso of a Woman (2021), and Portrait of t. (2022)—feature fragmented and distorted 3D-printed female bodies, produced through intentional glitches and motion blur, using materials such as bronze or laser-sintered nylon.

Before analysing the impact of Kahn’s 3D portraits on contemporary women’s self-portraiture, it is essential to clarify why these works should be considered self-portraits, despite being based on models other than the artist herself. While Kahn’s sculptures depict various individuals, they serve as externalised expressions of her self-concept, aligning with scholarly interpretations that emphasise self-awareness over physical likeness in self-portraiture. This tradition of self-reflective art can be traced back to the 16th century, a period marked by a shift in ideology that liberated human agency from divine authority and fostered the notion that ‘the human-creator has discovered his inner self’ (Peraica 2017: 21). Hall similarly asserts that ‘self-portraits are produced not by looking out at a mirror, but by withdrawing into the self’ (Hall 2016: 11), while Peraica maintains that self-portraiture is ‘a matter of self-interpretation rather than a direct copy of a mirror image’ (Peraica 2017: 10). Likewise, Sofonisba Anguissola viewed the self-portrait as a means to assert her identity as a creator—an assertion of both artistic production and intellectual agency (Trotot 2016: 5). Thus, the history of self-portraiture privileges authorship, introspection, and conceptual engagement over mere physical resemblance.

The use of models in self-portraiture is neither novel nor anomalous. In describing a self-portrait featuring himself and his daughter creating art, Nuñez noted that his three-year-old daughter ‘picked the leopard cushion seemingly to express her African roots’ (Nuñez 2009: 53). He explicitly identifies the work as a collaborative self-portrait, arguing that ‘creating my own image … makes me the creator of this image, even if, in some cases, these are collaborative self-portraits’ (Nuñez 2009: 53). A comparable example is Pipilotti Rist’s Sip My Ocean (1996), a collaborative work with her friend Pierre Mennel (Tomkins 2020). This immersive video installation presents a mesmerising, kaleidoscopic underwater realm through mirrored projections on adjoining walls. The work oscillates between intimate close-ups of a submerged woman drifting through the waves alongside evocative scenes of domestic objects sinking into the depths, illustrating how self-portraiture can manifest through collaboration and experimental media.

Furthermore, Kahn explicitly identifies her sculptures as self-portraits and articulates a critical stance on the representation of the female body. She argues that ‘feminist self-portraiture and people looking at the female-identified body should consider the damage that representation has inflicted upon the body,’ further stating that ‘the act of representing the body involved a certain violence in its capture—the damage, fragmentation, and decay in these figures arose from that history’ (Sophie Kahn Live Virtual Studio Visit, 2020). Her statement underscores that feminist self-portraiture is not merely an act of self-representation but a profound critique of the politics of visibility, fragmentation, and historical trauma.

This essay offers a nuanced examination of Kahn’s 3D self-portrait sculptures, exploring how her innovative application of technologies such as 3D scanning and printing transforms traditional paradigms of female self-portraiture. It examines how Kahn challenges traditional cultural discourses, particularly binary conceptions of gendered bodies and commodified representations of the female body. Additionally, it explores how her deconstructionist approach disrupts normative beauty standards rooted in historical conventions. Ultimately, this essay aims to demonstrate the significance of self-portrait forms, such as 3D sculptures, in contemporary women’s self-portrayal practices as transformative tools. The research employs an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, integrating gender studies, deconstructionist theories, and glitch art and feminism. It also draws upon relevant historical contexts, including 19th-century discourses on hysteria and the medicalisation of the female body through electrotherapy.

Death, Pain and Patriarchy: Women’s Gravestones and Electroshock

In Machines for Suffering (2018-2019), Kahn presents a series of fragmented white female bodies that appear to be afflicted by profound suffering. Their forms are distorted and convulsed, as though wracked with pain. These sculptures evoke the aesthetic of classical marble figures found in graveyards. In her interview, Artist Talk with Sophie Kahn, Kahn noted the prevalence of female marble sculptures in European cemeteries, which served as inspiration for this series (2018-2019) (see Fig. 1 and Fig. 2) (Artist Talk with Sophie Kahn 2021). Her observation is corroborated by several scholars who trace the historical prevalence of such cemetery statues back to ancient Greece. According to Burton, ‘women appear frequently on white-ground lekythoi, which rapidly became the preferred grave-gift for the dead in Athens, from c. 470 BC onwards’ (Burton 2003: 25). Similarly, Thomas notes that ‘many of the statues representing death and mourning are gendered female’ (Thomas 2000: 134).

However, the popularity of such forms did not reflect a higher societal status for women. As Burton argues, ‘an interest in women’s daily lives need not imply any change in the status of those women’ (2003: 25). These sculptures often depict women in a demure and chaste manner, accentuating their curvaceous bodies, thereby using the female form as a vessel for sexuality and desire. Historically, such funerary representations functioned more as decorative motifs than as reflections of women’s suffering.

Kahn challenges this decorative function, reframing women’s sculptures as expressions of repression within traditional patriarchal history. Machines for Suffering (2018-2019) (see Fig. 1 and Fig. 2) foregrounds the suppressed history of violence against women, with specific reference to the 19^th-century Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. Around 1878, many women were diagnosed with hysteria—a broad and inconsistent category encompassing a variety of transient symptoms. Patients commonly experienced a range of distressing symptoms, including:

Faintings and swoonings (the so-called ‘vapours’), paralyses of the limbs, anaesthesias (that is, losses of sensation in the skin), coughing, feelings of strangulation (a ‘boule hysterique’ was said to rise ominously in the throat), trance-like states (Goldstein 1982: 211).

Although both male and female patients were treated for hysteria, numerous scholars have highlighted the profoundly gendered nature of the diagnosis and the violent, often brutal treatments that exemplified patriarchal control over women (Hustvedt, 2012; Goldstein, 1982). Hustvedt contends that hysteria was, at least in part, a psychosocial reaction to the restrictive roles imposed on women in a society that rigidly defined female behaviour (2012). Likewise, Goldstein argues that ‘the flowering of hysteria in the late nineteenth century was coincident with and a pathological by-product of the flowering of the bourgeois value system of patriarchal authority and sexual asceticism’ (1982: 212). Women diagnosed with hysteria were subjected to invasive treatments, including electrical stimulation, ovarian compression, and hypnosis.

Despite men also receiving similar diagnoses, the framing of hysteria as inherently female reflects a misogynistic bias. Braun suggests that ‘such pathologisation is tied to the birth of patriarchy and to what is known as the phallic regime’ (2020: 128). These violent medical interventions commodified women’s bodies, reinforcing their objectification within clinical settings (Collins & Rothe 2017: 162). Female patients were regarded as a ‘reservoir of material’ for ‘laboratories, teaching facilities,’ and ‘the museum of living pathology’ (Hustvedt 2012: 12), thereby entrenching gender-based discrimination within medical discourse. This dynamic sustained the reproduction of ‘sexual discrimination’ and ‘hegemonic ideologies’ in medical practice (Lupton 2012: 138), ultimately reducing women to objects of scientific scrutiny and diminishing their subjectivity.

 

Fig.1: Machines for Suffering I, bitforms gallery, New York. Sophie Kahn Life-size 3D print (laser-sintered nylon), gesso, acrylic paint, UV varnish, 2018.

 

In Machines for Suffering (2018-2019) (see Figs. 1 and 2), Kahn employs 3D-printed white plastic rather than traditional marble, utilising materiality as a narrative strategy to critique patriarchal repression. Her use of hollow forms—eschewing the weight and permanence of classical marble statues—Kahn intentionally creates an effect that symbolically subverts the male gaze. Notably, she omits body parts that carry particularly gendered connotations, such as breasts and buttocks. This absence is laden with potent gendered implications, rejecting the objectifying visual codes that have historically defined the female body throughout art history.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, male artists frequently emphasised particular features of the female form to facilitate objectification, often preserving sexual organs while omitting other bodily parts—such as the breast and buttocks—thus reducing women to ornamental objects for visual consumption. A striking example is Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde (1866), which portrays a woman’s genitals in an overt display of sexuality intended, as Linda Nochlin notes, ‘for the private delectation of a sophisticated connoisseur’ (1988: 176). This work exemplifies a mode of representation that reduces the female subject to an object of desire. Another notable case is Hans Bellmer’s series The Doll (1936), which depicts mutilated female forms—dolls, often limbless, yet retaining plump breasts and reproductive organs—provoking disturbing questions about ‘sadomasochism, pornography, and male fantasies of erotic domination and control’ (Lichtenstein 2001: 13).

In stark contrast, Kahn disrupts this visual tradition by intentionally omitting the very features that male artists have historically fetishised. This reversal functions as an act of resistance against the entrenched objectification of women’s bodies that has long characterised their representation in art.

Kahn’s approach aligns with the critique offered by American art theorist Amelia Jones regarding the absent body in 1970s art. As Jones argues, this artistic strategy ‘addresses the spectator’s own interpretive body and thwarts its conventionally masculinist, colonising ‘gaze’ by ritualising and, in many cases, erasing the ‘actual’ body from their purview’ (1998: 31). By omitting traditionally objectified elements of the female form, Kahn transforms the body into a site of defiance—stripped of eroticism and the gaze—and enables, as Lynda Nead notes, ‘a pure and independent aesthetic experience’ of the female nude’ (Nead 2024: 13). This deliberate omission challenges conventional portrayals that reduce women to decorative symbols and instead foregrounds the historical silencing of female suffering in art.

At the same time, Kahn’s use of fragmented materials enacts a symbolic dismantling of patriarchal structures. She describes these sculptures as resembling ‘the church that is falling down’ (Artist Talk with Sophie Kahn 2021), with the collapsing church serving as a potent metaphor for patriarchy itself—fractured and destabilised. The term machine in the title of her series not only signifies a rejection of patriarchal authority but also gestures towards a broader critique of systemic oppression embedded within an anthropocentric worldview—one that fosters exploitation, domination, and violence against marginalised groups. As Judith Butler argues, resistance to patriarchal structures and gender-based oppression is intricately entangled with wider socio-political anxieties. She observes that ‘anxieties and fears about permeability, precarity, displacement, and replacement; loss of patriarchal power in both the family and state; and loss of white supremacy and national purity’ are often displaced onto debates surrounding gender (Butler 2024: 13).

 

Fig. 2 Machines for Suffering V. Sophie Kahn 3D print (laser-sintered nylon) from 3D scan, gesso, acrylic pigment, 2018-19.

 

Kahn also recognises the restorative and healing capacities of art, particularly through the medium of self-portraiture. Crossley suggests that artistic expression, much like literary narration, provides ‘a way of dealing with traumatic events’ (Crossley 1999: 1685). Similarly, in Phototherapy and Therapeutic Photography in a Digital Age, Cristina Nuñez underscores that ‘the whole process (of making self-portraits) is often cathartic’ (Nuñez 2013: 140). This restorative potential is evident in Kahn’s sculptures, where pedestals of varying heights—evoking brown tree branches—symbolically support the suffering female forms. Rendered in earthy brown tones, these supports envelop the fragmented bodies, functioning as protective structures and metaphorically enabling a process of healing and reconstitution. They suggest a vision of women tending to the wounds inflicted by patriarchal violence through the reconstruction of fragmented selves—ultimately enacting a form of rebirth.

‘Poetics of the Failure’: Glitch Art and Deconstructed Beauty

Kahn describes her artistic practice as a ‘poetics of failure’ in an interview (‘Lunchtime Studio Visit with Sophie Kahn’ 2021). This term refers to her deliberate use of corrupted data from 3D scanners, resulting in sculptures marked by ‘blind spots, frayed edges, and voids’ (Yang 2014). Although technically reproducible, these so-called ‘failed’ works are in fact carefully constructed, forming part of Kahn’s distinctive aesthetic strategy of deconstruction. This approach, I argue, represents a form of resistance against normative beauty standards and critiques the objectification and commodification of women’s bodies in the digital age.

To better understand Kahn’s notion of the ‘poetics of failure,’ it is helpful to consider the concept of failure itself. In many respects, failure can be seen as a mode of escape from dominant norms. In The Queer Art of Failure (2011), Jack Halberstam highlights its subversive potential, arguing that ‘failure allows us to escape the punishing norms that discipline behaviour, and it preserves some of the wondrous anarchy of childhood’ (Halberstam 2011: 3). This challenge to normative discipline through failure is central to Kahn’s aesthetic exploration.

Another useful concept in this context is the ‘glitch,’ which Kahn references in relation to her poetics of failure. Originating in the aerospace industry during the 1960s, the term ‘glitch’ was initially used to describe ‘a small change in voltage’ (Russell 2020: 18). It was later adopted by the electronic music industry and digital art industries as a form of creative expression. The glitch aesthetic evolved from sound to visual forms in the mid-1990s, developing within a ‘post-digital, post-internet’ culture (Betancourt 2016: 2). As the aesthetic moved from ‘glitch music’ to ‘glitch visuals,’ it came to emulate ‘pixelated images that re/compose reality as a juxtaposition of discrete fragments’ (Betancourt 2016: 1). What were once considered technical errors became recognised as valuable aesthetic materials (Betancourt 2016: 3). This shift underlines the glitch’s potential to disrupt stable systems and provoke catharsis, as outlined in the Glitch Studies Manifesto (2011):

Use the glitch as an exoskeleton for progress. Find catharsis in disintegration, ruptures and cracks; manipulate, bend and break any medium towards the point where it becomes something new (Menkman 2011: 11).

Kahn extends this notion of glitch into 3D art, deliberately exploiting the scanner’s instability to create glitch effects that manifest as irregular and fragmented sculptural forms. Rather than using standard methods for 3D portraiture—such as the ‘Kinect’ scanner and the technique of ‘avoiding motion’ (Li & et al. 2013: 3)—she employs the Copernis 3D scanner, which is primarily designed for static objects, such as props in film production (‘Lunchtime Studio Visit with Sophie Kahn,’ 2021). While static objects pose no issues, the movement inherent to live human subjects produces more glitches when captured with this scanner. Moreover, Kahn intentionally chooses corrupted data and conflicting spatial coordinates over pristine scans. As Yang explains:

When materialised as sculpture, it reveals losses and blind spots, frayed edges, and voids in the solid object that stand for all the things that the scanner could not see (Yang 2014).

These ‘blind spots, frayed edges, and voids’ represent rupture points through which Kahn mounts her resistance. Her work seems to expose the concealed flaws within systems that otherwise appear seamless.

The hidden issues that Kahn aims to illuminate through glitch aesthetics are often closely tied to the stereotype imposed upon women within patriarchal systems. Her intention appears, in part, to be influenced by the work of Francesca Woodman. Kahn has noted that she was inspired by the ‘glitches, motion blur aesthetic, and failures’ in Woodman’s photography (‘Lunchtime Studio Visit with Sophie Kahn,’ 2021). Woodman used long exposures to produce blurred, spectral images that marked a departure from traditional modes of self-portraiture. For instance, in Space 2, Providence, Rhode Island (1976), she deliberately used extended exposure times to create a blurred portrait of herself in a dark dress within an empty house. Her work has been described as ‘a strategic appropriation and subversion of stereotypes of femininity’ (Baker et al. 2003: 53). Kahn was especially influenced by the ‘instability of the camera’ in Woodman’s photographs—a quality she adapts into her 3D scanning techniques (Artist Talk with Sophie Kahn, 2021). This influence forms a conceptual bridge between the photographic glitch and the digital glitch, reinforcing Woodman’s legacy of using glitch and visual instability to deconstruct dominant portrayals of femininity.

Kahn’s glitch-inspired 3D sculptures resonate with the concept of ‘glitch feminism’ as developed by Legacy Russell. This framework highlights both the deconstructive and rebellious power of glitch aesthetics, while positioning them as crucial to feminist discourse. Glitch art, by its very nature, embodies subversion and disruption. As Betancourt (2016: 6) observes, the glitch aesthetic ‘offers an understanding of [its] potential for transgression in the violation of the established codes of perception and order.’ Similarly, Meeken (2022: 49) notes that ‘by breaking the rules and structures, glitch art utilises artistic play to transgress these boundaries.’ According to Russell, ‘glitch feminism’ posits that artists inject their ‘positive irregularities into these systems as errata, activating new architecture through these malfunctions, seeking out and celebrating the slipperiness of gender in their weird and wild wander’ (2020: 13). This approach deliberately rejects the hegemonic binary of the body, causing the ‘violent socio-cultural machine to falter, sigh, shudder, and buffer’ (Russell 2020: 13). Glitch feminists thus aim to envision a multiplicity of genders and bodies by disrupting normative systems—a goal closely aligned with Kahn’s artistic pursuit. Her work challenges the patriarchal, commodified template for defining women’s bodies, opening up space for the recognition of diverse and multifaceted embodiments.

Within this framework, Kahn employs glitch aesthetics to contest notions of stability and hierarchy, creating a deconstructive and cathartic effect. One such hierarchy is the commodified definition of female beauty, which contributes to cultural homogenisation. As Collins and Rothe argue, women’s bodies are ‘policed and become a site for capitalist accumulation, where (their) various parts are culturally repackaged through advertising, commodification, and then consumed to meet the patriarchal standard for female beauty’ (2017: 166). These patriarchal norms have led to the standardisation of beauty ideals, erasing diversity in the representation and understanding of femininity. As Richardson and Odlind observe, ‘the overproduction of narratives of beauty produces a form of self-objectification where women’s bodies become objects for extreme modification’ (2023: 9). This results in idealised female figures that conform to patriarchal aesthetics—fantasised and appealing, yet ultimately unhealthy—shaped by commercial advertising and social media. In response, many women turn to plastic surgery, cosmetics, and digital editing to align themselves with these fabricated ideals.

Kahn critiques this phenomenon, asserting that models—due to excessive retouching—are not ‘real,’ instead provoking an ‘uncanny valley’ effect (‘Artist Talk with Sophie Kahn’ 2021). These figures appear almost human, yet their hyper-feminised artificiality (akin to sex robots) elicits feelings of discomfort and disconnection. Kahn’s work embraces imperfection as a form of resistance against over-commercialisation and the restrictive ideals imposed on contemporary women. She further highlights the role of body shaming in producing the ‘uncanny valley’ aesthetic, in which excessive plastic surgery and digital manipulation distort natural human features.

In her practice, Kahn purposefully depicts imperfect female forms, emphasising uneven skin textures and inconsistencies. In ‘Portrait of J I (Pthalo)’ (2023) (see Fig. 3), for example, the subject’s wrinkles are accentuated, accompanied by additional granular textures caused by corrupted data. These glitches operate, as Russell puts it, ‘as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance’ (Russell 2020: 12), resisting the polished and idealised beauty typically celebrated in classical sculpture. Through this, Kahn redefines beauty by rejecting the logocentricity of patriarchal beauty standards, instead presenting beauty as flawed, diverse, and inherently personal.

Moreover, Kahn uses glitch to obscure body parts that have historically been fetishised and commodified under patriarchal systems—as Sharp notes, ‘emotionally charged objects of desire’ (Sharp 2000: 295). Features such as the breasts, lips, and face have long symbolised the objectification of women in patriarchal contexts. However, in Torso of a Woman (Shards) (2013) (see Fig. 4), Kahn intentionally erases overtly gendered characteristics, challenging traditional representations. This blurring of gender identity constitutes a form of rebellion against the commodified aesthetic, contributing to the dismantling of oppressive systems that, as Meeken (2022: 49) observes, ‘regularly reinforce oppressive racial, gendered, and colonising norms.’

To a significant extent, Kahn’s practice can be interpreted as a form of ‘anti-portraiture’ realised through glitch aesthetics. Anti-portraiture, which emerged in the early twentieth century, resists the authoritative conventions of portraiture (Johnstone & Imber, 2020: 15). Much like other anti-portrait artists who ‘challenge the honorific ambitions of portraiture by depicting a subject who is old, unwell, or portrayed in an unflattering way’ (Johnstone & Imber, 2021: 10), Kahn’s subverts traditional aesthetic and social norms. Her representations of aged bodies or forms stripped of sexualised features directly oppose the authority and idealism embedded in conventional portraiture. In doing so, she not only critiques classical beauty ideals but also challenges the perfectionism inherent in digital technologies such as 3D scanning. Ultimately, by dismantling both the physical form and conceptual underpinnings of sculpture, Kahn reconfigures contemporary understandings of beauty.

 

Fig. 3 Portrait of J I (Pthalo). Sophie Kahn. 3D print from 3D laser scan with gesso and acrylic paint: life size, 2023.

 

Fig. 4 Torso of a Woman (Shards), Sophie Kahn. 3D print from 3D laser scan, paint, varnish, steel, Life Size, 2013.

 

Time, Fluidity and Disintegration: Diversity of Identities and Gender

While statues have traditionally symbolised permanence and stability, incorporating a temporal dimension into sculpture presents inherent challenges. Kahn subverts this convention by infusing her work with notions of movement and temporality through digitised 3D printing. As Meeken and Knochel observe, ‘Unlike a photo or video, a glitched scan does not pretend to be ‘real’ and, as a result, might tell us more about performing bodies and relationships to time’ (2022: 50). Kahn herself notes, ‘The precise scanning technology I use was not designed to represent the body, which is always in flux’ (Kahn 2025). Rather than depicting a static, fixed form, Kahn employs 3D-printed materials to convey the fluid, disintegrating, and evolving nature of her portraits. These materials enable her to portray bodies in transition, fluid identities, and shifting gender expressions—deviating from the conventions of self-portraiture that aim to capture a singular, frozen moment. Through this innovative approach, Kahn offers a more nuanced exploration of identity—one that encompasses multiple temporalities and establishes a dialogue between different moments of the self.

Kahn’s 3D artwork Triple Portrait of E. (2013) (see Fig. 5) exemplifies this concept of fluidity. She captured the subject at three distinct moments and combined front, side, and downward views into a single white sculpture. Each segment also reveals uneven surface textures caused by the subject’s movement during scanning. Kahn likens Triple Portrait of E. (2013) to Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 (1912), describing it as an ‘accretion of time’ (Artist Talk with Sophie Kahn, 2021). This method of capturing motion is akin to stroboscopic photography, which records multiple instances of a subject in a single image. By incorporating the flow of time into one artwork, Kahn emphasises bodily movement. Her approach challenges conventional portraiture by resisting the idea of capturing a single decisive moment and instead emphasises the continuous fluidity and changeability of the self. As Gorichanaz suggests, ‘creating a self-portrait then is a matter of bringing oneself forth over time—constructing oneself, rather than simply depicting oneself’ (2019: 1). Kahn highlights this process of self-construction and the inherent mutability of identity. Similarly, Nuñez asserts that self-portraits ‘contain the essence of the self and its unique evolution in life’ (2009: 57). Unlike traditional portraits that represent a fixed point in time, Kahn’s 3D works present the self as ever-changing, offering a representation that aligns more closely with lived identity. As French theorist Roland Barthes argues, ‘what I want, is that my (mobile) image, buffeted among a thousand shifting photographs, altering with situation and age, should always coincide with my (profound) “self”’ (1981: 12). The self-portrait thus becomes a record of constant evolution, stripping away static representations in favour of a more fluid self. Kahn’s 3D sculptures encapsulate multiple phases of transformation, inviting viewers to reflect on the mutability of self-image.

Moreover, Kahn emphasises the impact of time on the body and identity. Through 3D printing, she creates sculptures that highlight the multiple identities women assume across various stages of life. In Triple Portrait of E. (2013), the three interwoven masks symbolise the evolving nature of female identity over time. On a personal level, Kahn’s work reflects her own experiences with the complexities of female identity. Her exploration is deeply informed by her navigation of dual roles as artist and mother; she describes herself as ‘a Victorian lady housewife doing little watercolours at night in front of the fire’ (‘Sophie Kahn Live Virtual Studio Visit,’ 2020). Through the layered masks in her sculptures, Kahn conveys the contradictions, struggles, pain, and eventual reconciliation involved in identity transformation. Her work challenges the rigid, singular identities often imposed on women, offering instead a more fluid, dynamic, and multifaceted portrayal of female existence.

 

Fig. 5. Triple Portrait of E. Sophie Kahn. 3D print, laser-sintered nylon, 2013.

 

Conclusion

Kahn presents a new form of contemporary feminist self-portraiture that transcends formal innovation. Her technologically sophisticated self-portraits challenge established notions of idealised femininity, gender norms, personal narrative, and binary understandings of the body.

By analysing a selection of Kahn’s 3D portraits, this paper has explored how her use of transformative materials and glitch aesthetics reshapes contemporary women’s self-portraiture. Her deconstructionist approach subverts traditional ideals of beauty and fixed identity.

While this study offers insights into how specific forms and materials contribute to the evolution of contemporary women’s self-portraiture, it focuses exclusively on Kahn’s 3D self-portraits. However, numerous other examples of innovative self-portrait practices warrant exploration. Future research could, for instance, examine how Kahn’s various media-based self-portraits—such as 3D sculptures, AR/VR installations, and video works—intertextually relate to one another, how each medium complements the others, and how together they construct a multidimensional, fluid, transgressive, and transformative representation of self.

Another compelling area of inquiry is the role of glitch aesthetics, particularly how the recombination of fragmented data might function as a process of repair and healing within the self-portrait. Additionally, further research could critically assess the limitations of these technological forms—for example, the environmental implications of 3D printing materials. Moreover, comparative studies examining other artists who employ technology in creating women’s self-portraits could broaden the scope of understanding in this field.

In conclusion, this paper identifies key questions for future scholarship, which may significantly contribute to redefining the parameters of contemporary women’s self-portraiture in the digital age.

Acknowledgements:

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the guest editors of this issue, Lizzy Orcutt and Dawn Woolley, for reviewing my article and providing numerous valuable suggestions. I would also like to extend my thanks to my two supervisors, Nathanial Gardner and Guillem Colom-Montero, for their consistent support of my research. I am especially grateful to Sophie Kahn for her significant contributions, unwavering encouragement, and for graciously allowing me to use the photographs of her work. This article would not have been possible without their generous help.