ABSTRACT
YOULOGY: Self/Portraiture, Canada, and Taras
Polataiko's YOU series
Janelle Mellamphy
1996
What does YOU mean? Who does YOU define? If your initial
answer is that YOU defines the other, why is it then that every I responds to the other's
YOU? When you say you, I think I. When I say YOU, you think I. Or is it we? YOU is
both singular and plural, one and anyone, clear and complex. YOU can be anyone and
everyone. But can YOU mean you, if YOU means me and them as well? YOU puts into question
the very idea of identity. This equivocality of where one YOU begins and the other ends,
the questioning of the subject position and of the object of that subject's gaze, is what
is explored in Taras Polataiko's YOU series. In this thesis, I seek to face the question
of identity in terms of self/portraiture. Centring my discussion around YOU, a series of
self-portraits by Ukrainian-born Canadian artist Taras Polataiko, I will face the question
of identity first with regard to portraiture, by defining the aspects of the self a
portrait aims to encapsulate; second as applied in YOU, when the series is read through a
Lacanian lens; and third, as taken to its il-logical conclusion: the YOULOGY of a notion.
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