Being diagnosed mensa as a young teenager, Marie’s self-understanding changed radically. She had always felt different, but with the diagnosis it was cemented that she was different. Her cognitive impairment was marked. A deviation that has since been the foundation of her artistic expression and research practice.

As the very first photographic study of herself, Marie explores what it means to be mensa in a series of self-portraits, where the first of these self-portraits has been defining for her artistic practice (picture to the right).

The images feel somewhat uncanny. They play with the familiar, but distort the familiarity to visualize to the pruner how it feels to carry the diagnosis mensa; to be neurodiverse in a neurotypical world. The reality you see is not the one Marie sees. Marie is alone with her experience of the world. It leads to isolation and loneliness.