Maybe, Happiness Is...

In Maybe, Happiness Is..., I am preoccupied with the questions: What does happiness mean? What is the emblem of uttermost freedom? Through a personal journey, I blend my own thoughts with those of others, mirroring my travels and experiences.

Maybe, Happiness Is...

In the project, I am preoccupied with the questions: What does happiness mean? What is the emblem of uttermost freedom? Can we even describe it in words or perhaps through photography? It started in May 2022 when I made a radical decision to move out of my studio in the Hague without necessarily knowing the reason behind it. I just knew that I didn't feel happy. I moved to Amsterdam instead and nomadically transported myself to different places. These circumstances enabled me to open myself to novel energies and encounters. Let's say affective encounters with strangers, pure moments...Since then, I have been transgressing geographical borders to search for happiness yet mingling on the thin line of sanity and madness. In my quest for joy, I present a contradiction, an intangible idea to reflect upon.

I feel that the concept of happiness has preoccupied our minds since the start of the pandemic. People reconsidered their professions, relationships, and environments causing them to undergo severe life changes, either voluntarily or not. After the pandemic, we were all forced to live as if nothing happened and get back on track with our lives as before. We pretended that this two-year confinement filled with anxiety and insecurity, didn't affect us. However, it did have a huge impact on us in various intensities and spheres, especially concerning our mental health. The rates of anxiety and depression disorder patients have never been higher and hence, the universal experience of happiness seems to have dropped radically. What is it then that we lack nowadays? How is it different from before? Or is happiness no longer the main pillar of existence?

This body of work required me to intensively travel in the past two years, preventing me from ever reaching a comfort zone. Due to my unstable living situation, I learned how to reduce my life into a sports bag. I started my journey in Amsterdam and continued to many other European metropolises, ending up as far as Mexico City and Buenos Aires. My days were filled with unfamiliar, spontaneous, and surprising energies that were taken away from me (and most of us) in the past. 

Maybe, Happiness Is… is ultimately based on dialogue, be it the one with myself or strangers. In order to explore the idea of happiness, I need to travel and immerse myself in new environments as I don't want to portray it in a singular way, instead, I strive for the most diverse approach possible. At the same time, by allowing myself to travel, I feel as if my ideas about happiness change accordingly, they get shaped by new experiences and environments that I temporarily occupy. All these different points of view and perceptions, begin to mark transformative moments and potential growth which I aim to capture within this body of work. It's a two-way process for me and by collecting such a multitude of ideas, I also hope to give back to the people I meet.

Apart from my personal travels, the project was developed during artist residencies at FACC & Void Projects in Cádiz, Spain; Pocoapoco in Oaxaca, Mexico and lastly La Ira de Dios in Buenos Aires, Argentina.