La Rocca’s examination of the borders between outside and inside, looking and being looked at, finds expression in an especially captivating way in her "self portraits" that show an x-ray image of her skull shown in a light box. Produced as a consequence of her illness (La Rocca suffered from intestine cancer for ten years) which is too, covered with the handwritten lettering “you”. The work form an iconic self-portrait of Ketty La Rocca and is simultaneously a general memento mori, referencing the bodily mortality of the viewing vis-à-vis. The construction of her own identity becomes possible only in dealing with the other, or in Ketty La Rocca’s words: “The you has already started at the border of my I.”
