traces

Traces is a project acting as a meditation, a lingering over the emotional scars and wounds that shape us; over the invisible marks that love, loss, and rejection has left in our souls and bodies. By using natural forces, processes and methodologies, the project looks at the landscape, the sea and its waves, the sandy or rocky formations, as metaphors for these deeply human experiences. It utilizes them as vessels for speaking about the traces of time, of longing and belonging, but also of unrequited feelings, of conditional or reciprocal affect. Just as waves leave behind grains of sand that are swept away over time, so do the moments of our lives that tear us apart or even temporarily fulfill us. These traces transform ourselves and identities, yet they are transient, they erode with time, they organically fade.

Traces is a project consisting of a series of photographs that asks questions regarding this emotional, affective labour that we, women and other femininities are embodying, performing, surviving. This labour, that historically and socio-politically has been imposed on the female identity is what is being questioned in this project by explicitly transcribing its marks, its erosions, and its chasms on our ways of living life, being and becoming in interpersonal erotic relationships, perceiving ourselves. 

We are conditioned to believe that suffering in love is a mark of authenticity, that pain and heartbreak are integral to the human experience. Traces is a  project that comes to confront this destructive narrative, asking why we choose relationships that tear us apart, and why society glorifies the pain of love as something that should be embraced or even sought after.