Invisible Words,  8th of September - 1st of October, 2023 Gallery AMA; Helsinki, FI

I/We
Photography installation, 2015/2023/2115
Pigment print, mirror

After photographing a crowd at an event few blocks from my from the previous apartment in 2015,, I cut out the figures out with scissors and placed them against a black background, removing indexical references to place and event. The object of their gaze is absent; their gestures, orientation and emotion remain.

Through this absence, I explore the photograph’s capacity to detach itself from the original event and open towards an experience it does not fully disclose.

In exhibitions, viewers have asked whether the images were made with AI, as the figures looked unnatural, like advertising imagery. An AI-generated image resembles a photograph with no event behind it. I/We reaches the same condition from the opposite direction: the event was real, but the traces that bind the image to it have been removed. What remains is attention itself, directed towards something no longer there.