Self-depiction is foundational to Faith Couch's work. It allows her to engage in temporal reorientation, to insert herself into histories and imaginaries, and to create images that deploy gestures, symbols, and indexes drawn from both art historical and cinematic languages. In this process, she aims to re-code visual vocabularies and generate images that are haptic, multisensory, and attuned to the rhythms and frequencies of Black life.
The work asserts the significance of true depiction: images emerging from lived experience, rather than constructions for external consumption. The mundane, the ordinary gestures, quiet interactions, and intimate moments becomes a locus of resistance, emphasizing continuity, and affective truth beyond the spectacle of slapstick, conflict, or caricature.