musetouch_issue_7

Allison Diaz Hau
I totally love you’re collages and I am desperate to hear a bit more about how you created
them - in particular the Haunted MIrror series. How did you come up with the idea and
how was it done? Are the photos used in the series photos you shot yourself or did you take
pictures from inspiring other artists (if so which ones do you usually like)?
A couple of months ago, I heard a story on National Public Radio about Prosopagnosia, or
“face blindness.” It’s a psychological disorder that, for the man in the story, made it impossible
for him to recognize even his girlfriend. The story ended with them breaking up, and
while the girlfriend would sometimes walk by the cafe he worked at and see him, he never
realized it was her. After that, I wanted to play with the brain’s perception of faces. The first
piece I made was a combination of a male and female face. The original portraits came from
a cigarette ad in a 70s Life Magazine. They were both perfect, both respectively very masculine
and feminine. I wanted to confuse perception by creating a face that was both at the
same time. After that, I started playing with more recognizable faces. By rearranging vintage
celebrity portraits (I find them in used books, mostly) I made them unrecognizable and essentially
synthesized “face blindness.” The pieces are all scrambled to varying degrees- some
are completely rearranged and combined, with an eye from one person, a nose from another,
and so forth. Some are slightly shifted. The result across all of the work so far has been the
same though. The celebrities turn into strangers. I used the diamond shapes do imitate looking
through a kaleidoscope. I prefer to use images from the 60s and 70s, because to me their
looks are classic and just fit with the sort of “psychedelic” theme.
Please, tell us a bit more about who Allison Diaz is: Where do you come from, what are
you’re doing when you’re not an artist, what kind of style is very typical for you and why?
I was born in Hawaii but grew up in California. I’ve been studying Spanish Literature at
California State University, Sacramento for the last four years but finally graduated this year.
I’m really excited because this will really be the first time I can spend some serious time and
energy on my art, which has always taken a back seat to my studies. During school I was
heavily influenced by Magical Realism, which is a Latin American literary movement that was
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