2025 Finalists

The artwork “The Wedding Guests” began with a fascination for the family photographs tucked away in my parents’ home – fragile images that carry the weight of many generations. Human beings have always been at the heart of my creative practice. I am drawn to understanding not only the individual but also the broader weave of society and collective memory. While my earlier work explored the human being as a biological organism, I now look at us as cultural artefacts.

How does the environment into which a human animal is born shape their development and identity?

As an adult, the impulse to revisit and reflect on family memories becomes a way to reach deeper into one’s own nature. The beautiful – and at times traumatic – life experiences of parents and grandparents, the cultural and social landscapes that surrounded them, and the time periods they lived through, all continue to shape who we are today, whether we realise it or not.

Clifford Geertz once described a person as being like Chartres Cathedral: made of stone and glass, yet more than just the sum of its materials. It was built in a specific time, by specific hands, within a particular worldview. To truly understand such a structure, one must know more than just what defines all cathedrals – one must grasp the ideas of the society that created it: its understanding of God, of humanity, of architecture. The building becomes a mirror of its time, a vessel of meaning.

“The Wedding Guests” is composed of layered imagery, each layer inspired from different photographs. In addition to the memories my mother and father had gathered throughout their lives, the attic boxes held those of my late grandparents – faint traces of lives once lived. Some memories stretch so far back that the faces in the photos are no longer known to us. And yet, I am bound to them by blood. I see my own jawline in the face of a stranger, or my mother’s cheekbone in the fading contours of a portrait. Just as memories shift and change over time, they also transform within my paintings – merging, distorting, fading, or taking on entirely new meanings. This transformation happens through the layering of images, the quiet omission of details, or the slow addition of new ones painted in by hand.

I have long been drawn to the deeper layers of human experience – to history, to ritual, to the invisible threads that run from past to present. In regions shaped by centuries of occupation, silence, and resilience, these threads are often subtle but persistent. Family traditions, gestures, or phrases passed down through generations carry with them echoes of older belief systems, social orders, and survival mechanisms. I am particularly fascinated by how historical events and cultural practices – weddings, funerals, harvests, exiles – have left their mark not only on our collective memory but on the very fabric of who we are today. Through my work, I seek to trace these quiet inheritances, to sense how history breathes through the body, and how the rituals of those who came before us still live on – transformed, perhaps, but never entirely lost.

(18/25)