Personal Notes: "Open it" Installation, February 4, 2020
During a recent conversation with Schneider, he expressed his wish for me to have a signature style before I leave the academy. He feels that my diverse artistic approaches make it hard to categorize my work. This interaction made me reflect on the inherent fear about legitimacy and creating one's own unique mold.
This work is a response to conservative notions of artistic identity. I focus on connecting disparate ideas and crafting poetry from them. This freedom allows me to embody multiple roles—cleaner, painter, and bookbinder—in one project. It’s a celebration of the liberty every artist has to define what art means to them.
Open it is layered in its execution and meaning. The room is empty except for a book titled "Why surfers should be fed?", a philosophical nod to a discussion on universal income between John Rawls and Philippe Van Parijs. This title isn't just a provocative statement; it’s an invitation to explore the freedom and elegance with which surfers—and skaters, like the ones I've always admired—navigate their worlds. The image of a surfer could be seen as a reflection of each one of us, we are all made of water, returning to our element, and trying to catch the good wave with elegance.
This room is like a sanctuary. The windows are open, letting the cold air in. The book, placed deliberately in a lonely corner, serves as a sacred object. Its presence invites visitors first to observe and contemplate the title and the book on the edge. For those truly curious, it is not necessary but an option to engage deeper by calling a number written inside. This leads to an SMS interaction, culminating in a flirty poetic invitation to meet at a waste treatment plant after the exhibition. Art is already there, in this city, more useful than even the Eiffel Tower. This part of the work transforms time and space, urging viewers to contemplate the existing beauty around us and open doors to new experiences.
Through Open it, I aim to blur the lines between daily life and art, inviting contemplation and participation. This installation is not just a reflection of my views on freedom and art but also a physical manifestation of my belief that art should open doors, literally and metaphorically.
This project centers on the idea of using the museum K21 as a lighthouse, with its light shining during evenings and nights, regardless of the museum’s usual operating hours. To achieve this, I find inspiration in Diogenes of Sinope, portrayed through the symbol of an Androgynous surfer. He is an historical figure who lived in a barrel and challenged societal norms.
The lights emit Morse code, using that famous phrase from Diogenes of Sinope: I am looking for a human. «Je cherche l´Homme. » in French, this phrase - by confusing man as a figure of humanity and man of the male gender - makes one think of the exclamation I have often heard from heteronormative women, signifying their search for a true romantic encounter.
Coming To Voice, K21, Düsseldorf, 2021
TALK
https://www.artjunk.de/events/current-social-paintings-relations-networks/
Iced roses containing hand-engraved military dog tags. These American dog tags contain messages from unknown people, revealed in the first chapter of Why Surfers Should be Fed?
In a time when we stay more and more at home, glued to the screen of our phones, seduction has lost its nature. People hope to find this extraordinary idea of destiny, at the end of a click.
The short film tells the story of a boy who hopes to meet a girl named Luna. He constantly sees signs that bring him back to her. Is he making up these signs?
BPA Space, Cologne 2022.
I don’t think I had any bad intentions. There was just something in your eyes that made me
want to meet you, that's all.
The tarot card that responds to the 6:18 p.m. mirror time is the moon. It is the eighteenth card of the Tarot de Marseille. It symbolizes fear, dread, anxiety, and worry, i.e. everything
related to insecurity. It is a card that is qualified as mystical, it designates intuition and clairvoyance.
It gives you a fruitful imagination and develops your spirituality so that you can feel the feelings of others. The Moon guides you to evolve in the field of divinatory arts and telepathy.
And if you plan to specialize in such a field, it advises you on the interpretation of dreams.
