Who forms an artist’s family: the people they are born among, or those whose work helps them understand themselves? In Spiritual Family, Gillian Wearing approaches artistic influence as a form of temporary transformation. Rather than simply quoting her predecessors, she physically steps into their images.

The four portraits bring together Andy Warhol, Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe and Claude Cahun—artists who challenged conventional ideas about identity, gender, visibility and self-presentation. Wearing reconstructs their appearances with carefully fabricated masks and prosthetics, yet allows her own eyes to remain visible. The resulting images hover between homage and disguise: we recognise the historical artist, but we are continually reminded that someone else is looking through the surface.

The display also complicates the traditional self-portrait. Wearing presents herself not by revealing an authentic face, but by becoming other people. Identity emerges as something assembled from references, relationships and performances—a central concern throughout her career.

Born in Birmingham in 1963, Gillian Wearing is one of Britain’s most influential contemporary artists. Working across photography and video, she examines the tension between how people present themselves publicly and what they may think, feel or conceal privately.