From digging in my grandmother’s freshly ploughed field to studying archaeological conservation, I have always been fascinated by things and their effect on us. I have always felt a kinship with decaying, unusual, and textured surfaces. I assign great value to the objects that have agency over me specifically because not all objects have this power, only a select few. And it is this fascination that I bring into the studio.
What feeds the human relationship with objects? Looking at the theories of anthropologist Daniel Miller, I found my thoughts, albeit more eloquently expressed. The idea that objects can materialise values and resolve conflicts, revealing deeper truths about ourselves and society. Using the space and time of a residency at Altes Spital, I am working on a series of installations with objects as mediators as the main focus. Can we use objects in the same way we might use a mirror but with more distance, seeing our memories and fears played out in objects by assigning emotions to them? Can we find empathy for others, animate and non animate, visualising care without human representation? I want to push myself where I might normally find embarrassment by challenging what disgusts us through unconventional materials, such as human hair where we normally use wool.
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