DISSOLVED

Image culture exists somewhere between fact and fiction. As easy as it is to manipulate virtually any aspect of an images, I never alter my analog optical illusions with digital editing.

I keep my eyes busy and collect and make photographs every day. Lately, I have added to this collection ‘objets trouvés’ (natural or discarded objects found by chance) and objects that have been passed on for generations in my family.

I bring these photographs and objects with me during long walks and look for places where the landscape witnessed historical events.

With nature as my backdrop, I play with flat images that I cut out, tear apart and reassemble., I then add the bulky objects to these collages and photograph them,  before disassembling the assemblages. The process allows me to create imagined realities and impossible sculptures only visible through the camera’s eye.

Automatism drives my work, as I incorporate spontaneous associations and coincidence, and welcome alienating outcomes. Disorientation and confusion help me to blur the boundaries between reality and fiction. I aim to make the spectator question what they see.

The creative process resembles my own experience of sifting through layers of truths within myself, with reference to my family’s past.  I seek out the lost experiences of exiled generations in my family. I use these memories as material to pay tribute to their steadfastness in their beliefs and values in times of oppression and hardship.

I wish to fathom the intangible, break the cycle of silence in my family and pay tribute through spirited and sometimes even whimsical ‘trompe-l’oeil still lifes’ that give way to a less charged future for my children.

2020