Between Softness and Structure

2025, Solo exhibition at Lite Haus Gallery, Berlin

This body of work explores the tension between vulnerability and control, and the emotional labor involved in navigating those opposing forces. The collection combines portraits and abstract forms, using unstretched canvas and textile elements to create a visual language of fragility, repetition, and quiet resistance.

The title refers to the psychological balancing act of maintaining softness: emotional openness, sensitivity, and intuition, while also holding structure: boundaries, control, and internal scaffolding. The paintings are hung using domestic references such as drying racks and clothespins, intentionally evoking care work, exposure, and impermanence.

The work includes both stretched and unstretched canvases. During the exhibition’s opening performance, the artist unfolded and clipped paintings live in front of the audience, presenting the act of displaying as part of the emotional and physical labor behind the work.

Materials include acrylic, fabric, thread, and mixed media. Many paintings show visible seams, folds, and physical interventions such as sewing or ripping, emphasizing a process of both construction and repair. The color palette leans toward skin tones, faded reds, neutrals, and washed-out pastels—reminiscent of something that’s been handled.

The collection emerged in response to feedback that labeled earlier work as "soft" or "feminine." At first interpreted as a critique, the artist began to reframe these terms as points of strength. This collection became a site for unpacking those associations: how softness can be structural, and how structure doesn’t always need to be rigid.

Through the Looking Glass

2023, portrait series on layered Plexiglas

This collection explores identity, presence, and perception through a series of layered portrait paintings on Plexiglas. Each work is composed of multiple transparent panels, painted separately and then assembled to create depth, movement, and a subtle parallax effect. The result is a shifting image: fragmented, multi-dimensional, and never fully still, reflecting the complexity of how we see others and ourselves.

The faces depicted are both intimate and distant. Their features are sometimes misaligned or interrupted by the layered structure, suggesting the instability of self-image and the incomplete nature of human understanding. As the viewer changes position, the image changes with them, mirroring how personal histories, emotions, and projections color every act of looking.

The use of Plexiglas rather than canvas introduces a sense of lightness and transparency, but also control. Each layer is carefully planned and painted, demanding precision in both execution and assembly. The process references architectural drawing and technical layering, rooted in the artist’s background in architecture.

This series builds on earlier explorations of the body and the self, but shifts toward portraiture and surface. It plays with beauty, color, and dimensionality, while quietly questioning what lies beneath the surface we present.

Being Human

2023, Anatomically incorrect view on anatomy of being human

This collection explores the human body as both a biological system and an emotional metaphor. Created during a time marked by illness within the artist’s family, the work draws on a personal fascination with anatomy, not from a clinical or academic standpoint, but through instinct and emotion.

The series was influenced by medical imagery: microscopic scans of cells, histology slides, and brain imaging. These references were used not for anatomical accuracy, but as visual prompts to process complex feelings of love, fear, and physical vulnerability.

The abstract forms evoke internal bodily structures: blood vessels, tissue, skin, bones, yet they remain intuitive and interpretive. The work reflects on the tension between fragility and strength, on how the body holds both memory and emotion. Themes of motherhood, care, and familial connection are embedded throughout.

The materials include acrylic on canvas, sewn elements, and beadwork. These tactile components point to domestic labor and inherited tradition, while emphasizing a slow, layered, and physical painting process.

Being Human serves as an abstract anatomy of experience, less concerned with how the body works, and more with how it feels to live inside one.