Everything that exists changes over time. Something endures and simultaneously disappears within me, and everywhere. I imagine opacity and feel that I am not alone. It is something irreducible, something that connects us and ensures our participation.
I imagine the moment when I was realized through millions of beings. I have the impression that I have seen something like this before, but I almost forgot about it. I recall the place I come from. I look around and see a multitude of incredible animals and plants, as if they are rehearsals for existence, experimental forms, metamorphoses of being.
In my opinion, imagination dissolves into opacity. It helps us establish connections between the known and the unknown. Through it, events and thoughts can touch us, converse with us, and tell us who we are.
By imagining opacities as a state of being, I explore the complexity of identity and our relationships with the surrounding world.
Our bodies are composed of water. It is water that gives life and cradles us in the womb. I imagine that when the evening wind blows from the land to the ocean, the vast waters call out and invite us to return. I envision aqueous forms of coexistence, their opaque, shape-shifting entities. "I seek within myself this mutable life, but I find only Emptiness. My body is tethered to time," a time that beats with the rhythm of my breath, my heart, and the pulsating planet.
Water descends to the earth as droplets of rain, both gentle and torrential. I imagine the moment when the sky releases the water it has carried throughout its existence. Gazing at the clouds, I see vapors rising from the crest of every wave, from the churning rivers, and the drying lakes. The atmospheric masses we perceive as clouds, shifting between formlessness and form, are part of an endless exchange. All bodies, as a collective, contribute to this rain.
Internally, I still feel the presence of a wild existence, yet this wildness presents itself as an uncharted and unknown facet of my personality. I cannot quite describe what it is about encountering a wild creature that leaves an indelible mark on me. I become one with it, and the animal merges with me, no longer existing as something external. During the interaction, and long after, I cannot discern who owns the curiosity and who feels the sadness, anxiety, or occasionally paralyzing fear.
It is said that the eyes of an animal, when they look at a human, are vigilant. I imagine that when we avert our gaze from wild creatures, we, in a sense, marginalize our animality. But what happens when the animal turns its gaze away from us? In the gesture of turning away, which the gorilla bestowed upon me in response to my gaze, I read a message. It seems to me that this being is showing me that its wildness and animality have been put to the test. The glass that separates us, the scenery constructed by humans, does not create conditions for a meaningful and authentic exchange of glances. There is no space for tenderness, curiosity, or fear. There is a lack of space for interaction with wildness. The gesture of sitting with its back turned has become a metaphor for loss and a symbol of opacity for me. I interpret it as a concern for the safety of that inseparable wildness, which has been essential to us until now. I feel that my inner animal is a being that needs protection.
We seek refuge when we are wet or cold, and we also hide from the burning sun. Without a home, we become beings that obstruct and drift through reality. Not feeling ourselves, we, in a sense, also lose our place of residence. I imagine a journey in search of a home, even a metaphorical one, as an expression of yearning for past forms of our bodies. It is a metaphor for creative existence and a symbol of the process of understanding, a continuous learning of coexistence in the world.
This journey does not circle the globe, nor does it delve into its depths or ascend its highest peaks, but rather it explores the vast realms of processes and connections. In searching for shelter, I seek a connection with my inner world, an unfulfilled desire for a safe space to which I have access and into which I can crawl to be reborn and rejuvenated. The cycle of life on earth resonates most deeply with me through the sea and the shell. I imagine that a shell, migrating through the world, emerging from calcium and carbonate, engages in the life of all beings. Its shape reminds us that everything is interconnected. The shell, evoking the idea of a space to retreat into, has become a metaphor for home.
Imagining opacity, my presence emerges as a fog composed of all beginnings and the sum of losses. Everything that happens lasts for a moment or thousands of years, and I am all I have lost. I imagine it as making anything at all exist, and that I am who I am. The fog allows sunlight to reach the eyes from every conceivable direction. The world becomes invisible as if it ceases to exist. In this, I recognize a part of myself—difficult to name, seeming impossible to describe. I imagine opacity and feel that I am not alone. Though I cannot see clearly, I gain a glimpse of myself from the side, and for a moment, it becomes a conscious part of this community. I envision my identity as an ecotone, a boundary, a symbiotic space of human and non-human elements. For me, the photograph of an abstract landscape is an attempt to record "our closeness in the codes of life," which will leave traces in the world.
Documentation from the exhibition PIX.house Gallery, Poznan, Poland, 2024.
