You Are Who You Think I Am

In You Are Who You Think I Am, internationally recognized body-paint artist and photographer Paul Roustan pulled viewers into the complicated, charged conversation surrounding nudity, perception and intent.

Roustan’s work exists at the intersection of beauty, vulnerability and taboo, where the human form becomes both a battleground and a sanctuary. Through meticulously painted bodies and intimate photographic portraits, the exhibition examined how we project meaning onto nakedness and how those projections often reveal more about the viewer than the person being viewed.

His subjects are real people with real stories. Through Roustan’s empathetic process, they step into new versions of themselves as the paint settles, becoming unique, powerful, flawed, joyful, insecure, healed or healing. The resulting images celebrate individuality, reclaim the body as art rather than object and challenge the reflex to sexualize, judge or moralize.

Presented at Not Shockboxx from February 7–21, 2026, You Are Who You Think I Am was not simply a provocation. It was an invitation to strip away assumptions, reconsider our reflexes and look again, more honestly this time.