Life is a long and lingering feast;
dessert, perhaps, its final hope.

As big data and artificial intelligence become deeply entwined with everyday life,
our ways of knowing are narrowed, blurred, and gradually formatted.
Truth and falsehood become little more than shifting shades of grey.
Hope, once realised through lived experience, is reduced to what can be instantly seen and obtained.

“Browse the ten most beautiful places to see before you die” appears in oversized type.
To see becomes to know; browsing replaces travelling.

Amid the uncertainty of life,
we drift before our screens,
immersed in a visual dialectic—

half-open eyes,
half-asleep, half-awake.

In the final moment before we leave,
what do we hope to see?

Research Statement

We often trust that seeing is believing. Yet every act of seeing is shaped by the body, perspective, memory, and lived experience. We never observe the world from outside ourselves; instead, we understand it through the conditions of our own perception. Seeing is therefore not a neutral act, but a way of making sense of the world.

The circular view formed by the bottom of a cup becomes a metaphor for perception. Resembling both a camera lens and the opening of a well, it allows us to look outward while quietly reminding us that every act of seeing is framed. What we perceive is always partial, and more often than not, we remain unaware of the very conditions that shape our vision.

The metaphor of viewing the sky from the bottom of a well resonates deeply with the questions explored in this work. The sky seen from within the well is not false: it is real, yet incomplete. For those who have never known another horizon, that fragment of sky is enough, and therefore rarely questioned.

Perhaps our own perception works in much the same way. We seldom question the boundaries of our vision, not because they reveal the whole world, but because they have always been sufficient. A Piece of Sky does not seek to deny reality, nor does it promise a way beyond the well. Instead, it invites us to reconsider the conditions through which reality becomes visible. It asks whether we are willing to question our own ways of seeing, and to acknowledge that what we understand as the world may be only one of many possible worlds.

Perhaps we spend our entire lives catching only a glimpse of the whole. What matters, then, is not what lies beyond the frame, but how we come to understand everything we believe we see.

Artwork Information

Archival inkjet print

130 × 86 cm

Edition of 3 + ap 2

2024