Thoughts, Feelings, Behaviour

I explore cultural islands through emotional isolation: a shared yet personal loneliness shaped by self-reliance. In staged photographs, a solitary figure is trapped in a loop between self-absorption and vulnerability.

Embodied Condition

I have lived with chronic insomnia, anxiety, and recurring states of heightened bodily alertness for most of my adult life. My relationship history has been fragmented, and I have long held the belief that I must manage on my own, independent of others.  & To my understanding, there is nothing unusual about this experience. Only later in life, almost forty, after starting a family and becoming part of a small community, have I begun to reflect more clearly on my former self as a product of its time, shaped not only by personal experiences and trauma, but also by cultural moment.

Cultural Islands

My project approaches the theme of cultural islands through emotional isolation. This, however, is a paradox: loneliness is both a deeply personal experience and a widely shared condition. The contradiction is further intensified by an ideal of freedom that emphasizes individuality, where self-focus, introspection, manifestation and neurotic tendencies become entangled.

Thoughts, Feelings, Behaviour

My ongoing project Thoughts, Feelings, Behaviour (2025–) consists of staged photographs of an anonymous, fully painted nude female figure isolated within a studio. Positioned against saturated fields of colour and technical surfaces, the body appears heavy, reclined, or self-directed, caught in a closed loop.

In the images, decorative buttercream cakes, frames, a quad bike, knives, snakes, a drone and a massage chair also take on their own roles. Through these elements, I explore the interrelations between desire, superficiality, aggression and melancholy.

Image as Material

Aesthetically, I draw on the expertise I have gained through my work and through directing models within fashion photography. At the same time, I blur the boundary between photography and painting by further processing my photographs on paper. I explore how different types of paper, the scanning process, and the effects of spontaneous stains and creases alter the nature and interpretation of the photograph - like painting with a dirty brush.

Absorbed in oneself

The works are based on my interest in capturing a figure trapped within itself, yet blind to its own shadows and the dim atmosphere it produces. The project is underpinned by my reflections on the alternation between superficial self-sufficiency and self-loathing vulnerability. The friction and close oscillation between these two opposing forces appear to me as a way of being in the world, as physical sensations, and as a condition: lovelessness arising from those who deeply long for love.