《2 Portraits》创作于英国脱欧公投与特朗普首次当选美国总统之后，彼时艺术家正身处伦敦。作品回应了这一时期弥漫于公共生活中的不确定感：既有政治秩序显露出裂缝，新闻、金融市场与数字媒介持续制造紧迫的信息更新，而人们对未来的期待逐渐与焦虑、恐惧和失序交织在一起。

影像被投射于墙面，整体形似一座舞台或剧场。左右两侧分别分布着一幅仅以阴影标示边界的隐形画框，上方弧形滚动屏幕则同时让人联想到游乐场招牌、股票交易所行情系统与公共警报装置。中央不断滚动的西里尔字母写着“This is Russian. It means nothing.”大多数观众能够辨认其为俄语，却无法理解内容。文字因此在传递任何具体信息之前，便首先表现为一种神经质的警告，指向国际政治中由媒体符号所塑造的恐惧。

左侧画框呈现一幅荒诞而混乱的宏观图景：街头暴力、游戏影像、增长图表、加载失败的进度条，以及佩戴红色或蓝色领带、始终不露面孔的西装人物反复交替。滚动至尽头却无法载入新内容的界面，则将政治选择表现为一种持续运转、却难以产生真正变化的重复机制。不断上升的图表与加载状态共同指向对增长和未来的盲目执念。美国南方木结构教堂则像一次电脑误操作般反复弹出，并伴随链锯噪音，使宗教传统、地方文化、机械暴力与系统故障叠加在一起。

与之相对，右侧画框进入一个深陷精神困扰的个体内心。梦境、记忆缺失、自我怀疑、私人对话与逐小时记录构成一幅无法稳定成形的心理肖像。个体试图通过语言、表格和持续记录重新获得秩序，却进一步陷入自身感知与记忆的混乱。

两幅“肖像”在尺度上分别指向社会与个人，却共享相似的内部结构：重复、等待、过度刺激、意义缺失，以及无法解除的警戒状态。作品由此将一个时代的精神面貌与身处其中的个体意识并置在同一座信息剧场中。宏观世界的政治焦虑并非停留在外部，而是以记忆紊乱、自我怀疑和无对象的恐惧，在个人内部留下回声。

2 Portraits was made in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s first election as President of the United States, while the artist was living in London. The work responds to the uncertainty that permeated public life at the time. Established political structures appeared increasingly unstable, while news media, financial markets, and digital platforms generated a constant sense of urgency. Expectations of the future became entangled with anxiety, fear, and disorder.

Projected directly onto a wall, the image resembles a stage or theatre. Two invisible picture frames, defined only by their shadows, occupy the left and right sides. Above them, a curved LED ticker recalls an amusement-park sign, a stock-exchange display, and a public warning system. Across the centre, a line of Cyrillic text repeatedly announces: “This is Russian. It means nothing.” Most viewers can identify the script without understanding it. Before conveying any specific information, it therefore functions as a nervous warning signal, evoking forms of geopolitical fear produced and circulated through media imagery.

The frame on the left presents an absurd and chaotic view of the wider world. Footage of street violence, video games, growth charts, stalled loading bars, and faceless men in suits wearing alternating red and blue ties appears in restless succession. A scrollbar reaches the end of the page, yet no further content arrives. Political choice is rendered as a repetitive mechanism that remains active but seems incapable of producing meaningful change. Rising graphs and incomplete loading screens point to an obsessive faith in growth and in a future that is always expected but never fully arrives. A small wooden church from the American South repeatedly appears like a computer error, accompanied by the sound of a chainsaw. Religious tradition, regional identity, mechanical violence, and technological malfunction collapse into the same unstable image.

The frame on the right moves inward, entering the mind of an individual in psychological distress. Dreams, gaps in memory, self-doubt, private conversations, and hourly records form a portrait that never settles into a coherent shape. Attempts to restore order through language, documentation, and repeated self-observation instead deepen the confusion surrounding perception and memory.

The two “portraits” operate at different scales—one social, the other personal—yet they share the same underlying conditions: repetition, suspended expectation, overstimulation, the erosion of meaning, and a state of vigilance that cannot be switched off. The work places the psychological atmosphere of an era alongside the consciousness of someone living within it, staging both inside the same theatre of information. Political anxiety does not remain outside the individual. It returns internally as fractured memory, self-doubt, and fear without a clearly identifiable object.