Fluid Being (2015–2016)

I have always been curious about human nature, because we are strangers to ourselves, as Julia Kristeva states. An infinite unmapped territory.

Why are we so obsessed of looking at surfaces of things afar, rarely experiencing ordinary moments as whole? Inspired by Sigmar Polke's process oriented and haptic studies within photography and painting as well as Gerhard Richter, and the immersive methods by Kusama and Ana Mendieta, I seek for a tangible understanding of the basic elements that make up all, the state of things in Nature. For me the photographic process is magical. I use this process as means for creating a dialogue between me and the world of metamorphosis.

A familiar garden ground is my stage. When suddenly, new scents of soil, plants and insects touch and sting my skin—that organ of nerves and knowledge. The terrain feels no longer external, turning its movements and ways into my body, which becomes its medium. One can see through all senses—fingers have eyes, ears have eyes. By practicing fluid being, I can see beyond the surface—feel more.

This process is an experience of flux, a shift from distant spectator to assimilation. The surface of things opens up into its potential and another vision occurs—imagination grows over the projective knowing eye. It is fascinating how the no-mind knows things the obsessively controlling mind does not. It is this other knowledge that I am interested in, something that does not always have a known form or name, but it can be felt.

In order to create space in my inner geography, I set myself a performative score of sitting still, listening to the sound and volume of my breath, and everything around me. My head's weight and edges of the sceletal bones, pressing an empty light sensitive paper, found material from the beginning of 1970. As Yayoi Kusama assimilated inside her constructed spaces with her whole body, I immerse myself to immediate dialogue, silence.

542 times inhale-exhale. Clock telling me my score of 30 minutes has turned into circle. The Sun creates a "photogenic drawing” (concept by Fox Talbot 1839), a portrait of me. The pencil of nature paints with light, with the chemistry of the sensitive paper that records the seasonal weather, with the heat of breathing growing deep from my body, with water turned into sweat, saliva and tears.

All things have a nature of their own, so does this sensitive paper, sometimes resisting to create a trace. But even then, there is no empty image, empty being. When an image appears, breath paints its colors. First snow leaves its marks. This natural photograph is not a portrait of my physicality; it is an evidence, a recording of my being and becoming in space and time.

When you look at these drawings, I don't want you to merely look at them; I want you to dissolve yourself to the moment that exist and surrounds them with me.

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