My practice is deeply rooted in introspective rituals to access the subconscious. Through collage, I have found a way to make sense of a chaotic inner world by distilling the visual language into just a few elements. I enjoy the stringent expression that counters my internal abundance of words and feelings.

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The images find me and tell me how they want to be assembled. I am inspired by Surrealism and allow my subconscious to guide me. I often feel a strong sense that two image fragments have reunited after a long search. My work reminds me of the myth from Plato's Symposium, where Aristophanes tells the story of soulmates. According to the myth, humans originally had four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces but were split in half by the gods. The two halves were then condemned to wander the earth, always seeking their other half to become whole again. In the same way, I search in my collage art for the perfect halves that have been separated and unite them in my images. When successful, it creates a profound sense of wholeness and meaning within me, as though the individual fragments have finally come home.

 

I am fascinated by the hidden aspects of the human soul's inner mechanisms, the conflict between our true inner selves and the image we construct for the outside world, the unseen dynamics and power struggles in relationships, feminine identity, the cult of perfectionism and unrealistic expectations of oneself and life. Turning the inside out can be painful and messy. There is not only inner beauty to be found. My figures wrestle with this catharsis. The inner soulscape spills from their faces and bodies in a mixture of beautiful yet absurdly bulging minerals, plants, animals, and other organic forms. My collages are polaroids of my inner life while also striving to materialize emotions and conflicts that are universal to us all.

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My process is highly intuitive and meditative. The first part of the process involves cutting out hundreds of images - the puzzle pieces - and sorting them into archive boxes by theme. Once I have gathered an abundance of material, I begin taking each image fragment out of its box, observing it and placing it back. This meditative process continues until a specific cut-out speaks to me. I instinctively know when fragments belong together. Sometimes I am surprised by how precisely I am able to find the two needles in a haystack that fit together.

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