21x24cm, 44pp
*All of you who are like parts of a whole,
kept safe through the calming atmosphere that is infallibly surrounding you.
A gentle embrace that I have been longing for ever since I can remember,
watching from the outside as you live alongside each other without any doubts.
The red that emits a comforting warmth,
but at the same time a certain feeling of danger;
an ambiguous signal from society that is like a forbidden fruit to me.
No matter how relentlessly I try to take on your shape,
I will never truly be a part of your co-existence.
In reference to the concept of sonder, the feeling of being a____part of something follows a story about the internal discrepancy of existing as a distinct individual within a seemingly homogenous society. Based on the simultaneous impression of both synergy and otherness, it investigates the ambivalent feelings associated with this cross-section between belonging (being a part of something) and alienation (being apart from something). These conflicted sentiments, portrayed through two versions of the same persona in different realities, unfold into a personal exploration about identity and self-acceptance.
Using themes of presence and absence, motion and inertia, transformation and modification, it visualizes the ambiguity of both relating to and finding yourself in others while still being disparate from them. This narrative is repeatedly disturbed by close-up photographs of a pomegranate which represents both human society itself and the desire of community associated with it, accentuating a distance from the rest of humanity that is impossible to overcome. The futile outcome is the desperate attempt at a metamorphosis, trying to shapeshift into one of those many others who seem so similar to yet so different from oneself and losing one’s own shape in the process.
(2024)