SELF ~ OTHER ~ US brings together two projects, Sawubona/I See You and Speaking Likeness, by Prof. Rory du Plessis (University of Pretoria) and Prof. Kathryn Smith (Stellenbosch University) that use portraiture and testimony to interrogate questions of humanness, personhood and voice in visually innovative and critically challenging ways.  Both projects share a commitment to creative research as an act of retrieval and (re)mediation, and position the curatorial as a critical methodology in research and artistic practice. Working with different registers of face and voice, Du Plessis and Smith pursue new ways of working with portrait and storytelling, engaging complementary but distinct modes of visual remediation. The facial images in each installation trouble the easy consumption of their subjects, functioning instead as sites of projection which seek to restore human perspectives within different forms of institutionalisation. Theoretically, the exhibition embraces Giorgio Agamben’s work on the biopolitics of the face and asks visitors to consider the roles of consent and participation in the crafting of a (self)-image.