Grandpa, 1948, on the back of the photograph we can read: February 1st 1948, 22 years old, first kiss
In the impossibility to embrace, 2016, video 3:26 min
In watermelon sugar, 2019, flowers, watermelons, blue and memories
Tsunami for Richard, 2013-2016, postcards
Houses, 2016, google maps prints of all of Richard’s addresses
The Mission, 2016, letter, sound and photographs
Please feel free to kidnap me, anytime, paper and hopes
Dear Vincent, 2018, letter, low stool, rope, tea flower
Dear Vincent, it is me again, 2018, paper plane letters
In the search of Bas Jan Ader, 2017-until I find him, series of photographs
Ocean Wave, 2019, one-woman boat, wood, survival blanket
Finifugal - adj., describes someone trying to avoid or prolong the final moment of a story, relationship, or other journey, 2019, video
Love is somewhere else.
Each time we meet a stranger and end up fantasising what it would be like if they were a part of our life, we experience the mechanism of fiction.
As I became aware that this was happening to me on a daily basis, I felt a growing frustration. All those lives happening alongside mine and all the people to whom I will forever remain a stranger, filled me with a certain curiosity. I decided not to let these flash-fictions simply slip away, but instead to let them linger, consciously nourishing them and keeping them alive.
It turned out that it wasn’t enough just to think about this. Action was needed.
By slightly bending my perception of reality, I created semi-fictional situations. They remain in real life but with a possibility of something else.
Our lives are woven with misunderstandings. The feelings that hurt us the most are often the most absurd; a desire for something impossible precisely because it is impossible, a nostalgia for what had never been.
Soon enough the flash-fictions turned into obsessions, driving me towards the desire to meet these people; some of which were completely out of my reach, some whose lives were uncertain, blurry or unexplained.
When conscious, an obsession doesn’t have to be blinding; it can even lead to a balance. We encounter an obsession out of desire or a need to live more intensely.
As for me, first I fell for Richard and then for Bas Jan; one spent his life inventing his past, while the other disappeared, leaving his future suspended.
I was never a part of their world until I decided to communicate with them. My romantic quest gave life to all the pieces you can explore in this exhibition.
Sometimes people we have never met, or those whose disappearance is still an unsolved mystery, turn out to be more important, influential and present in our lives than those right next to us but distant.
Alongside these haunting beings, through our everyday flash-fictions, we get a taste of the world we would like to meet, but don’t dare to.
