Simona Ray: Do we still know how to see ourselves?

As she prepares to return to Times Square with SEE YOU II this month, Simona Ray is turning the mirror inward and asking what remains when the noise around us finally falls away.

We have never been more visible. Our faces, opinions and lives are recorded, shared and judged almost continuously. We know how we look to other people, how many have approved of what we have said and, increasingly, what strangers think of us. Yet Simona Ray is interested in a more difficult question: beneath all that visibility, do we actually see ourselves?

It is a question that runs through the artist and poet's work. Ray moves between painting, poetry, music, film and digital art, but the medium is rarely the point. What interests her is identity, human connection and the distance between who we are and who the world tells us we should be. Her work repeatedly asks what happens when those outside voices are removed and we are left with ourselves.

This month, that question will travel to one of the loudest places imaginable.

On 15 August, Ray returns to Times Square in New York with SEE YOU II, presented with Art Queens Gallery as part of Women Beyond Borders III. Her first SEE YOU asked whether we genuinely see the people around us. The second turns that question back on the viewer: can I see myself, and can you see yourself?

Times Square makes an intriguing setting for it. Few places compete more aggressively for our attention. Screens, advertisements and messages demand to be noticed every second. Ray's work asks almost the opposite. Rather than look harder at everything around you, she wants you to stop and look inward.

For Hinton's Summer 2026 cover, we asked Ray what she would do if she were given complete freedom. The conventional response might have been an interview or an essay explaining her work. Instead, she sent us a three minute film.

For Ray, the film is the article.

Within it, static is formed from random words that have been said about her throughout her life. Some are kind, others cruel. Her own music can be heard beneath that noise before the work gradually gives way to something far less common in modern life: space to think.

There is something revealing in Ray's refusal to explain herself too much. She has described her greatest desire as wanting people to feel seen, believing that only once we do can we begin to understand one another. Yet SEE YOU II suggests that understanding somebody else may first require something more uncomfortable: understanding ourselves.

Her work is deeply personal without asking the viewer simply to observe her life. Ray places something of herself into it and then steps aside. The words may have been spoken about her, but most of us know what it is to carry other people's definitions around with us, often long after we have forgotten who first supplied them.

And already, that question is beginning to travel beyond Ray herself.

When Seeing Yourself Changes Something Prague based artist Anna Marie Purić, who is collaborating with Ray and helping to capture SEE YOU II in New York, found herself confronting the same question at the centre of the project:

Do I see myself?

For Purić, the answer led somewhere unexpected. Back to music.

It was something she had wanted to pursue for years, but something fear and self doubt had repeatedly persuaded her to push aside. Encountering Ray's idea became a catalyst for recognising the parts of herself that were still asking to be expressed.

Now, inspired by SEE YOU II, Purić is creating her own music and music video in New York.

It turns Ray's question into something more consequential. Because if you genuinely see yourself, what can you no longer pretend you do not want?

Purić's response explores not simply the parts of herself that are easy to embrace, but those she has previously tried to suppress.

Joy, dance, courage and creativity exist alongside fear, anxiety, shame and self pity. Rather than separating one version of herself from another, the work brings them together through a series of visual symbols, each capable of carrying darkness and transformation at the same time.

A snake moves between temptation and guilt, but also transformation. A spider represents being trapped by the past, while simultaneously possessing the ability to create something extraordinary from within. A butterfly becomes joy, freedom and change. The spiral of a snail's shell represents the journey inward, growth and ultimately a return to oneself.

The transformation is not about pretending the darker emotions never existed.

Fear becomes courage. Anxiety becomes joy. Shame moves towards forgiveness. Self pity gives way to acceptance and responsibility.

And running through it all is dance.

It is something Purić denied herself for a long time, despite it being one of the places in which she feels most recognisably herself: alive, free and connected.

There is an important distinction here. SEE YOU II has not simply inspired another artist aesthetically. Its central question has prompted another person to act.

That may ultimately be one of the more powerful ideas within Ray's project. Seeing ourselves is of little consequence if, having done so, we continue pretending we cannot see what is there.

Perhaps self recognition demands something from us.

Three Minutes That is why the film below matters more than anything we could write around it.

Ray does not want the next three minutes to be spent reading about Simona Ray. She wants them to belong to you.

On 15 August, amid the lights, advertising and relentless noise of Times Square, SEE YOU II will ask the same question of thousands of strangers.

Anna Marie Purić has already begun answering it in her own way.

Before Times Square, Simona Ray is asking it here.

SEE YOU II by Simona Ray will appear in Times Square, New York, on 15 August 2026 with Art Queens Gallery as part of Women Beyond Borders III.