The grid provides stability – order. When we observe photos and videos, they are based on the grid. When we look at a photo closely, we can identify individual pixels – simple color squares – which, in their entirety, form a photo in a thousandfold quantity and, consequently, convey meaning.
I utilized this process – this complexity – for my work to deconstruct a portrait into its individual components and reassemble them with other parts from different portraits. This results is a completely new, almost inhuman, unfamiliar face. This abstraction of the face – making one out of many, creating a family from strangers – aims to point out our simplest commonality, that of being human.
In addition to the grid, my work draws attention to a much more profound theme. Just as humanity unites us, differences in culture, gender, skin color, sexuality, religion, age – the list goes on indefinitely – divide us. Just as these differences separate us, at the end of the day, suffering brings us back together. Growing up in this century, as well as growing old, is anything but easy, marked by a childhood of crises and a later life that cannot be enjoyed. While thousands of kilometers away, people starve, die from diseases, are enslaved. Many of these crises have a simple cause – a crumbling system that profits from exploitation and poverty. One that is based on the structures of colonization and treats people just as poorly. To simplify, the absence of being human.
My work is not a solution but a portrayal, a highlighting of humanity in a time of precariousness, in a time when people are reduced to numbers, mere parts of the system. Because even though at the end of the day, we lay down alone with all our problems, mistakes, and crises. We, as humanity, must see our strength as a movement, as a collective, and exercise our power as such.The grid provides stability – order. When we observe photos and videos, they are based on the grid. When we look at a photo closely, we can identify individual pixels – simple color squares – which, in their entirety, form a photo in a thousandfold quantity and, consequently, convey meaning.
I utilized this process – this complexity – for my work to deconstruct a portrait into its individual components and reassemble them with other parts from different portraits. This results is a completely new, almost inhuman, unfamiliar face. This abstraction of the face – making one out of many, creating a family from strangers – aims to point out our simplest commonality, that of being human.
In addition to the grid, my work draws attention to a much more profound theme. Just as humanity unites us, differences in culture, gender, skin color, sexuality, religion, age – the list goes on indefinitely – divide us. Just as these differences separate us, at the end of the day, suffering brings us back together. Growing up in this century, as well as growing old, is anything but easy, marked by a childhood of crises and a later life that cannot be enjoyed. While thousands of kilometers away, people starve, die from diseases, are enslaved. Many of these crises have a simple cause – a crumbling system that profits from exploitation and poverty. One that is based on the structures of colonization and treats people just as poorly. To simplify, the absence of being human.
My work is not a solution but a portrayal, a highlighting of humanity in a time of precariousness, in a time when people are reduced to numbers, mere parts of the system. Because even though at the end of the day, we lay down alone with all our problems, mistakes, and crises. We, as humanity, must see our strength as a movement, as a collective, and exercise our power as such.