It was never about my grand-aunt's asphyxiation

This story exist in the space between love and terror. I am drawn to images that feel staged, artificial—as if reality itself has cracked, and from early 80's B-horror films, where cheap effects and melodrama turn fear into spectacle.

This was supposed to be about my grand-aunt, who died of poisoning in the 1930s. My great grandmother thrown hers birthday party, where all of the participants were contaminated with carbon monoxide . My great grandfather’s sister, Maria, asphyxiated as the only one. During my great grandmother's birthday.

When she was being transferred to the family chapel, the coffin fell off the wagon and opened. The body had disheveled hair, her fingernails were ripped off and covered in blood, the inside of the casket was horrifyingly scratched. She must have asphyxiated twice then. This tale has been revolving around my family as well as my hometown.

I would often talk with my dad about how we would like to be buried - I think it was because of our nostalgic nature and a little bit because of my grand-aunt's case. His wish was to be cremated and so is mine. In 2019 I had this unpleasant duty to honor it and now he rests at the very same chapel as Maria. His name was Marius. His death was unexpected and made of small mistakes that now feel enormous. Like it was a part of a family curse—an inherited punishment passed silently from one generation to the next. And of course yes - it was during my mother's birthday.

One year later I found my mother laying on the flor in her apartment, the same one where the fatal party took place almost one hundred years before. The concentration of toxic carbon monoxide was so high that the house almost blew up and my mother's survival has been described as a miracle.

This project grows out of that fracture: the endless replaying of moments, obsessive if onlys, quiet self-accusation that follows loss. It is an attempt to negotiate with death—to look at it directly, dress it beautifully, and ask whether fear can be transformed into something tender.

From a medical standpoint, it is a struggle against trauma, but in my view, it is an attempt to overcome a kind of fate. The point where reality meets the surreal.