Summary

"Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?" sang the rapper known to his estranged mother as Marshall Bruce Mathers III, but better known to the rest of us as Eminem. That the Philadelphia-based artist Alex Da Corte was attracted to the early-noughties icon is perhaps unsurprising, given Da Corte’s long-held interest in artifice and pop culture, masking and makeup. After a friend noted a passing resemblance, Da Corte started to ‘embody’ the persona of the musician, not least bleaching his hair, in the hope that by taking on these outward signifiers, he might better understand a figure whose politics Da Corte profoundly disagreed with.