Gillian Wearing is sick of facades. In her piece Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say, Wearing exposes divides between outer appearance and inner thought, rebuking public performance of the idealized self. In her piece, Wearing asked strangers on the streets of London to unmask themselves and reveal their innermost thoughts. She invited participants to write whatever they wanted to on a white card, and photographed them holding their statement. In one such photograph, a young, well-dressed white man gazes almost complacently at the camera. Meanwhile, he holds a sign reading: “I’m desperate.” The jarring contrast between the man’s outward appearance and inner thoughts reveals a broken facet of our society, which demands the appearance of perfection. With her piece, Gillian seeks to unveil this issue, and calls for the collapse of outer and inner selves.