In Mario Benjamin’s work, the self-portrait is the place where he reflects about his own existence. Through his skill as a photorealist, the artist breaks away from the convention of the portrait by destroying himself, thus creating canvases that are irregular, fragmented, and that have been developed with the use of wood. The image of the portrait is distorted and dark: a being from beyond the grave, whose features can be seen thanks to the use of fluorescent paint and the texture he creates through the lines of the fabric. Normally, these pieces are installations presented on a grid on the wall. Untitled is a diptych that was part of a twenty-piece installation presented at the AMA in 2000. Each side of the diptych shows a face, one on the right and one on the left. In this case, the faces are depicted on a black background and the fluorescent lines are bright pink and purple. The canvas is assembled on a kind of seven inch-deep wooden box, giving the work a three-dimensional aspect. Each piece of the diptych is comprised by two canvases of different sizes. Benjamin’s work breaks away from and challenges all the preconceived notions about traditional Haitian painting and creates a new aesthetic of the portrait. Mario Benjamin was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1964. Despite being self-taught, he was well aware of the visual references of museums and the international trends of contemporary art. At the beginning of his artistic career he focused on drawing and particularly photorealism. His career became lucrative as he was commissioned to create portraits of families in the Haitian elite. While this was a profitable endeavor, he reached a point where his artistic concerns led him to destroy the traditional portraits he was making and reinvent them by using new objects. He ended up deconstructing the traditional image and creating a series of dark, after-death beings. Thus, on one hand, he breaks away from the balance of traditional Haitian painting and, on the other, from the destruction he creates an aesthetic harmony of a different caliber. By means of deconstruction, the artist addresses personal issues such as race and identity within his national reality and begins working in different mediums, such as painting, installations, and videos. He has exhibited at international institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, Florida (2003); ARCO, Galerie Bourbon-Lally in Madrid, Spain (1998); and the AMA gallery (2000). He also participated in the 1997 and 2009 Havana Biennials and the 2001 and 2007 Venice Biennials. Today, he is considered to be one of the most influential contemporary Haitian artists.