Who Are We When We Stop Performing?

A reflection on identity, creativity, and the journey back to oneself.

For a long time, I lived as a character. Life felt like a performance—one I had crafted and curated with precision. It was beautiful, in its way: an imaginative act that unfolded across the stages of fashion and art. I created rich universes, full of symbols and textures, manifesting entire worlds through fabric, color, posture. But somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like exploration and started feeling like simulation.

At first, my creative expressions felt like a way to understand myself, to make culture tangible, personal. Art gave me language when words failed. Through every garment, collection, or installation, I tried to answer the intangible questions—of belonging, identity, transformation. And it worked, for a while. But eventually, all the questions were answered. And I was left asking something else entirely: Who am I when I’m not creating? When I’m not performing?

Image Assortment, 2019

I didn’t want to play anymore. Not the role of cultural commentator. Not the role of the chameleon artist. I didn’t want to build yet another alternate reality to experience myself differently. I wanted to land. To feel my feet on the ground. To recognize myself in the mirror without needing a theme, a reference, or a concept.

But beyond fashion, beyond art, beyond performance—who was I?

I think many professionals lose themselves in their craft. The suit-and-tie corporate leader. The surgeon who lives in scrubs and operating rooms. We know this can happen in structured environments. But in creative industries—where freedom and fluidity are supposedly sacred—I never thought this level of loss could occur. After all, there’s no real uniform in art, right?

Except, perhaps, there is.

Buenos Aires, 2016

When I moved to London to attend Central Saint Martins, I had just left behind Argentina and my brand, Maison Nomade—a deeply personal project where I didn’t just design collections, I became them. I styled myself to match each collection’s essence, my personal image an extension of my work. I was one with the concept.

In London, I found myself in what felt like the epicenter of experimentation. A university where the boundaries of fashion, gender, art, and form dissolved into wild expression. It was a kind of heaven for a creative, and I learned quickly that fashion wasn’t just about clothing—it was about manufacturing identity.

HOW TO BE ME, WHAT I THINK I AM NOT, AND WHAT I THINK I COULD BE, TO REALLY BE WHO I AM, 2018

When you walked into the building, you saw the widest array of characters imaginable. One photography student, Balint Alovits, even made his final project documenting this exact phenomenon: students becoming their references, their influences, their inner worlds. And I blended right in. I was, I told myself, a “contextual creative.” My work responded to its environment—and to create, I had to embody the reference.

London, 2018

My creative work in London reflected London. A symbiotic relationship between body and environment emerged. I wasn’t just designing; I was becoming. I hadn’t considered myself a performance artist before—though it helped that I took acting lessons in London too—but suddenly, performance became a second skin. In a university where students might run naked through the halls as artistic statements, nothing was off limits. Everything was fair game in the name of creative pursuit.

Then came New York. The second skin hardened into armor.

USA visa, 2018

New York doesn’t allow for vulnerability—not at first. For someone as sensitive as me, the city’s energy was too sharp, too constant. My nervous system picked up every signal, every sound. So, I did what I had to do: I held the shield tightly. I wore my performance as protection, not expression.

And yet, in the midst of it, I would still see people in suits. Tech bros, finance guys—coded into their environment, heading to their offices. I used to think: they’re dressed for the role. I, on the other hand, the “free creative,” didn’t have a role. But I was wrong. Every context has its codes. And I had been following mine all along.

Every project or creative job became a costume change. Each identity I wore was shaped by the creative pursuit I was embodying at the time.

And while the creative performance can feel liberating, it is still a kind of suit—one that invites reflection, expression, and experimentation. It takes courage to put it on in the first place. As Rollo May once wrote, "Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being. Creativity requires passion and commitment. It brings to our awareness what was previously hidden and points to new life. The experience is one of heightened consciousness: ecstasy." For him, creativity is not just expression—it's the ultimate act of self-actualization, a way of making oneself visible, vulnerable, and accountable to the truth of one’s experience.

Image Assortment, 2018 - 2020

Creativity often begins in chaos, in the unknown. To show up in that space and create anyway requires a brave heart.

For a period of time, it’s exhilarating to play, to shift, to explore. But living too long inside that performance can also become exhausting. A suit, no matter how expressive, still weighs on the body when worn every day. As my passport filled with stamps, I often thought that if each transformation had been documented alongside them, my identity configurations would have required a passport of its own.

Eventually, I moved to Miami. This time, the land felt different. Not foreign, but familiar.

And I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

I won’t deny that each performance gave me something. Each character helped me unlock a piece of myself that needed to be understood. Walking in the shoes of a new identity always brought insight. But nothing prepared me for how Miami would transform me—or rather, what it would help me shed.

I arrived with a Williamsburg mullet dyed platinum blond. In Miami, the swampy humidity rusted my armor, slowly disarming me. The ocean, the softness of the light, the proximity to my Latin roots didn’t just soothe me—they stripped me down to my nakedness.

Miami, 2022

My body started shedding what it had collected in the last seven years. And that process—of letting go of versions of myself I had worked so hard to construct—was more vulnerable than any performance I had done.

Playing with identity is not for the faint of heart. You let your body change completely. I used to think only actors experienced that level of transformation. But I’ve done it, again and again. Preparing for collections, for exhibitions, for installations. Blurring the lines between the self and the artwork.

Then I started befriending actors—those who’d been in the industry long enough to carry the weight of every character they’d played. And I saw myself in them. I saw what it meant to blur the boundaries between the self and the character.

Miami, 2021

So I ask: who am I when I stop shape-shifting?

Each look was a chapter: the Ani rapada, the pink hair, the vampire era, the mohawk, the mullet. Each one a portal into a different worldview. A different set of sensations. A different vibration.

And then, not long ago, I had a dream.

It was so vivid, so visceral, it felt like I was navigating a lucid journey in my sleep. I saw myself in a cold, dark place. At first, I couldn’t see clearly—but after a while, I realized I was inside a box.

There was a paradoxical weight to the space: too hollow and too tight at the same time. I could barely move. But then, something changed. I saw a crack of light slip through, and a hand reached inside. The proportions didn’t make sense—like dream logic—but there was someone outside, trying to reach me.

As my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I saw her: me, but not. A version of myself, with a bright pink hairstyle, beaming and full of life, offering me her hand.

And then it clicked. She was using identity as a vehicle to get me out of a cold and depressive box.

I screamed in the dream, half laughing, half crying: “Shaved head Ana, manifest yourself!”I wanted to see every version of me that had pulled me forward.

And I saw them—one after the other. A runway of selves. Shaved head. Pink hair. Androgynous. Hyperfeminine. Each of them standing like sentinels. Each one a gear in the chain, teaching me something, holding me, guiding me closer to the exit. I was no longer alone in that dark space.

And who was I at the end of the day?All of them. And none.

Image Assortment, 2008 - 2020

Now, having explored them all—truly, all—I find myself wondering what it means to return. Return to what, though? Where is home after so many detours?

How do we come home to ourselves when we’ve lived in so many skins?

There’s no roadmap, I’ve found. Not in culture. Not in normcore—I tried that too, at 24, living in Copenhagen, capital of minimalist chic. That was a look. But it wasn’t a home.

Miami, 2024

Miami gave me a hint of what home feels like. As I let my hair return to its natural color and looked at myself in the mirror, I saw something I hadn’t seen in a long time: me. Not a character. Not a creation. Just me.

I felt exposed. Naked. Tender.

And I wondered: if I let go of all the masks, would I lose my edge? Would I lose my place in the creative world? Would I become too vanilla to matter?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But here’s what I know: when we let go of what once protected us, we will feel fear. That’s inevitable. Especially in a culture that demands we be everything except ourselves.

Culture shifts fast. It morphs, evolves, decays, renews. If we shape ourselves as mirrors to it, we lose any sense of ground.

Zygmunt Bauman called this condition "liquid modernity"—a time when traditional structures like family, religion, gender roles, and class have lost stability, and individuals are expected to endlessly reinvent themselves. What at first might seem like liberation is, in fact, a sign of profound insecurity. In Bauman’s words, “In a liquid modern life, there are no permanent bonds, and any that we do form must be capable of being broken at short notice.” Identity becomes a product: consumed, discarded, replaced.

Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, 1966

Fashion, especially, is a moving target. Trying to keep up is a kind of slow death—and an endless loop of overconsumption.

This doesn’t mean we must dress the same forever. Or become the creative version of Zuckerberg’s gray t-shirt routine. But maybe there is something more grounding than trend.

And to me, that’s style.

Mexico, 2025

Style is what remains when the performance ends.

Style is what dresses the soul.

The roadmap back to self isn’t in a trend, a lookbook, or a curated identity. It’s in the space between cycles. It’s in the discipline and routine of tending to the body through nourishing food and movement. It’s in the hugs we give to loved ones, and the gentle clothing that dresses us in faith and love. It’s in the quiet after the applause. It’s in the stillness that asks not who we want to be, but who we already are.

Today, I’m writing this from my balcony in Miami. The sky is soft with sunset. The air is humid and familiar. I look back at all the lives I’ve lived with awe. And I feel grateful—for the costumes, the stages, the mirrors. But I’m not dressing for a role anymore.

I’m dressing to stay.