Driven by an endless fascination for people, I am a collector of personal stories. Fascinated by the idea of the self as something constructed out of the narratives we create about our lives, I see the self as a perpetually rewritten story whereby we become the narrative we tell about ourselves. Using those stories I encounter by friends, neighbors, community members and family, I rewrite them into imaginary micro-dramas about intimate relationships and subjective space. Thinking about portraiture and the creation of self-making narratives, I use no narrative pretext other than my subjects. My video – photo and installation works often contain both highly staged and documentary material ranging from intimate day-to-day moments, to poetically hand crafted imagery.
Responding to a given situation and surroundings a set will be created on site working with the architecture and materials at hand. Narrative and set determine one and another. Rather than working with a fully prescribed script I ask my subjects to perform a set of actions. Allowing them to also make choices and bring their own interpretation of their part to the piece. Hence creating a space for idiosyncrasies and poetry to happen. Pushing the relationship between imagination and reality, between performance and authenticity.
By creating my own, new narrative structures from borrowed material, I aim to question the viewer’s own ‘self making’ narrative. In this way, I create so to speak, ‘platforms’ for other people to perform themselves. With imagination giving shape to the way we relate to each other and the way we relate to the world we live in, I strip down my narratives to the most bare of stages and scenes, creating an emotional set familiar enough to an audience to allow for their entry and potential absorption.
I would say my work finds its origin in my love for people. This is not ‘love’ in the merely personal sense, but rather love as a state of being. This love takes the form of a state of awareness of private fears and longings in a world full of projections – the projection of ideals and fears we guard, keep and identify with. This love is a way of looking: about being aware of the filters we look through when we look at others.
