UNFOLD 2 Collage

I am captivated by the exploration of accumulation and chaos as integral components of the intricate human experience. I firmly believe that the objects we gather and safeguard, as Gaston Bachelard poignantly suggests, mirror the essence of our intimate selves and our identities. Retrieving and repurposing these materials is an essential part of my artistic practice. The majority of my creations are meticulously crafted from donated magazines, generously provided by individuals close to me. These magazines are not just periodicals but repositories of personal narratives, providing insight into the lives of their collectors. Moreover, the materiality of paper holds a profound connection to my childhood. Magazines, in particular, captivate me due to their surfaces, bearing the marks of past impressions and the passage of time, endowing them with a distinct character. Through the intricate layering of paper and the creative reorganization of these heterogeneous surfaces, my aim is to evoke the multifaceted nature of the female experience. My creative endeavors do not arise from a vacuum. Engaging with collage means commencing from a source, be it an image, a texture, or even a single word. In my perspective, crafting collage necessitates stripping the constituent elements of their original context, fragmenting and reassembling them in ways that impart novel and unique meaning. In my artistic works, I aspire to challenge the conventional notion of 'timeless beauty' while venerating the natural and ceaseless process of transformation. The maternal lineage and the intricate interplay of presence and absence occupy a central role in my creations. My upbringing was marked not only by familial stories but also by profound myths that enveloped the extraordinary beauty of my maternal grandmother. These narratives persist as ethereal echoes that resonate through the corridors of time, touching subsequent generations. My grandmother, having departed at a tender age, left behind her portraits as an eternal legacy. These visual fragments have solidified her enduring youth within the collective memory. This circumstance has propelled me to scrutinize the inherently fleeting concept of beauty and to contemplate the profound recognition of our own mortality and perpetual transformation. Consequently, my body of work is punctuated by several thematic series in which I juxtapose female visages and isolated body fragments with elements of the natural world.