Jessiena Lake

Limited Edition • Exhibition Work

Guess Who explores the experience of searching backward through your own life after receiving an autism diagnosis in adulthood.

Using the familiar visual language of the Guess Who? game, the photograph transforms a childhood object built around identification—asking questions, eliminating possibilities, and determining who someone is—into a metaphor for late diagnosis. Mirrored game pieces replace the original characters, turning the questions inward: Who am I? Who was I before I knew? What changes when I finally have the language to understand myself?

For many late-diagnosed autistic women, diagnosis can bring a profound reframing of experiences that once seemed unrelated. Behaviors, sensory needs, communication differences, routines, relationships, and moments from childhood can suddenly be understood within a larger pattern. The person has not changed, but the framework through which she understands herself has.

The mirrors in Guess Who invite that process of recognition while also disrupting the premise of the original game. There is no single face to identify and no final character to reveal. Instead, every possibility reflects the viewer—and the search for an answer becomes an act of looking at oneself.

Guess Who is part of The Latest, an ongoing photographic and mixed-media project exploring my experience as a late-diagnosed autistic woman through constructed imagery, color, ritual, personal narrative, and neurodivergent ways of organizing and making meaning of the world.

16 × 24 in. framed archival pigment print
Signed by the artist
Includes a certificate of authenticity
$750

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This work is currently on exhibition in Excess Contemporary’s It’s All Too Much exhibition and is being sold through the gallery. Clicking Buy Now will take you to the exhibition website to complete your purchase.