The painting “TKO SAM JA KADA JA NISAM” (“Who am I when I am not”) by Mateo Balaban, known as Rain Bordo, presents itself not merely as a visual object, but as a philosophical provocation. It is a sentence that does not want to be read quickly. It resists consumption. It asks to be inhabited. The work operates in the space where language breaks down, identity dissolves, and the subject confronts its own absence.
At first glance, the composition is deceptively simple: bold black letters painted over a textured orange surface. Yet this simplicity is a trap. The painting behaves like a koan—direct, almost brutal, but internally infinite. The question is not who am I? but who am I when I am not? It presupposes a gap, a disappearance, a subtraction of the self from itself.
This is not a psychological question. It is ontological.
The Violence of the Question
Philosophy has long been obsessed with identity. From Descartes’ cogito to modern existentialism, the question “Who am I?” has usually assumed that the “I” exists as a stable reference point. Balaban’s painting refuses this comfort. The phrase “when I am not” annihilates the subject before it can even answer.
There is something violent in this formulation. The self is not allowed to defend itself with biography, roles, trauma, success, or failure. The “I” is stripped of context. It is forced into a space of non-being.
This resonates strongly with Martin Heidegger’s notion of Geworfenheit—thrownness. The self is thrown into existence without explanation, but Balaban goes further: he throws the self out of existence and asks what remains.
Is identity something that persists even in absence? Or is identity nothing more than a performance sustained by constant affirmation?
Language as a Scar, Not a Solution
The letters in the painting are rough, uneven, imperfect. They are not typographic; they are wounded. This matters. The text is not printed—it is painted, meaning it carries the trace of the body. The brush hesitates. The hand trembles. Language here is not a neutral vehicle of meaning but a scar left by the attempt to articulate the unspeakable.
Philosophers like Jacques Derrida argued that language always fails to fully represent presence. Balaban seems to agree—but instead of deconstructing language intellectually, he lets it bleed visually. The black letters sit atop an orange field that feels restless, almost anxious. The background is alive with movement, like a mind that cannot rest.
This suggests that the question cannot be answered through language. The sentence is not a request for explanation; it is an admission of collapse.
The Orange Field: Anxiety, Vitality, or Both
Color matters here. Orange is traditionally associated with energy, creativity, warmth—but also with warning. It is the color of alertness, of thresholds, of in-betweens. This is not the calm blue of transcendence nor the deep black of nihilism. It is an unstable color, vibrating between life and unease.
The textured background resembles tangled thoughts, neural pathways, or existential noise. It evokes the mental static that arises when the self is questioned too deeply. When identity cracks, what emerges is not silence, but chaos.
This aligns closely with existentialist thought. Jean-Paul Sartre described consciousness as a nothingness—a gap within being. Balaban visualizes this nothingness not as emptiness, but as overwhelming presence. The absence of the self is loud.
The Self Without Masks
The question “Who am I when I am not?” also implicitly critiques social identity. Who am I when I am not my profession, my reputation, my trauma, my desire to be seen? Who am I when I am not performing for others—or even for myself?
In this sense, the painting is deeply ethical. It confronts the viewer with the possibility that much of what we call “self” is constructed, rehearsed, and dependent on external validation. When these structures fall away, something raw remains—or perhaps nothing at all.
This echoes Eastern philosophy, particularly Buddhist thought, where the self is understood as impermanent and illusory. But unlike Buddhist calm, Balaban’s work is restless. It does not offer enlightenment. It offers confrontation.
Rain Bordo’s Core Obsession: Empathy Through Collapse
Throughout Rain Bordo’s artistic universe, there is a recurring insistence on empathy—not as sentimentality, but as an existential necessity. This painting does not ask the viewer to feel sorry for the self; it asks the viewer to lose the self.
And in that loss, empathy becomes possible.
If I am not fixed, not solid, not complete—then neither are you. If my identity dissolves, then so does my judgment. If I do not fully know who I am, how can I reduce you to a label?
This is where the painting transcends individual introspection and becomes political, even radical. In a world obsessed with identity markers, branding, certainty, and instant positioning, “Who am I when I am not” is an act of resistance.
Conclusion: A Question That Refuses Closure
This painting does not want to be understood. It wants to be lived with. The longer one sits with it, the more uncomfortable it becomes—not because it is obscure, but because it is too honest.
Mateo Balaban, as Rain Bordo, does not provide answers. He dismantles the very machinery that produces answers. The painting stands as a quiet but relentless reminder that identity is fragile, provisional, and perhaps unnecessary.
Who are we when we are not? Maybe we are finally free. Or maybe we are nothing. And maybe—just maybe—that is where empathy begins.
Rain Bordo 