2025 Finalists

“I have always yearned to return to nature. If only I could stay there, take root in the forest floor from autumn through winter, perhaps death would not seem so terrifying.”

The artwork addresses the fear of death through oral folklore and the ecological aspects of death. I aim to create a space where death is recognised as a normal, albeit unpleasant, part of life.

This interdisciplinary composition serves as a meditation on the fear of death. The mythological forest depicted in the painting establishes a sense of a location suspended between life and death, in space and time. Accompanying scents and sounds enhance the atmosphere, evoking associations with nature that feel slightly off, resulting in an uncanny mood. Viewers are invited to immerse themselves in this environment and explore their feelings regarding mortality.

Questioning a person’s relationship with death and grief was prompted by my own experience – the inability to emotionally process what happened and a complete disconnection from reality. This freezing of myself in time created an inexplicable confusion and pain that I could not articulate. Talking about death is not normal – this was taught to me from an early age by the environment around me. Coming from a very superstitious family, there was an unspoken rule that simply talking about death could somehow invoke it.

The topic of death did not interest me; it scared me. The fear was so pronounced that I could not imagine death without feeling the need to knock on wood 3 times or spit over my shoulder. During my studies, I have begun to address topics of interest to me through folklore, creating my own personal mythology, which mixes aspects of folklore, superstition, and natural rhythms.

My goal with this artwork was to create a comforting space to deal with uncomfortable feelings. Everything that I choose to include in the space is meticulously made to serve a purpose of slight discomfort, but with a willingness to participate in it. The storytelling nature of these paintings is ambiguous, not quite telling the viewer what they should be feeling, but being a place onto which feelings can be projected.

(10/25)