Why the self-portrait?

Creation is either passion or nothing. The middle way might be safe, but it is also the most uninteresting of them all. My affection towards the extremes cannot help itself but to ask: How do I commit myself completely, how do I fully dive into the creation? I couldn’t find any other way, but to give (up) my body.

With a masochistic passion, I give it over and over again. Everything else dissolves, save for a perverse suffering with a smile. I am absorbed in the emotion for which there is no more space left within me. When it ravages me completely, I do not have to relive it anymore. The spasm vanishes and the cycle is complete. The process is laborious and magnificent at the same time. I destroy myself within my own art, so that I could be born better and wiser. Only when I am torn to pieces can I put myself anew. No matter how disturbing what I do is, at the same time it is the only process which makes me feel good and safe. I am too much of an introvert and too shy to perform, but in front of the camera I can uncover my true self, as if I was standing before the inner eye. The easiest thing to do was to start from myself, because, how can I say to someone: -You are suffering? Let it break you in front of the camera. I promise it will help! It seemed impossible to force others to face their emotional bodies and expose them. The most honest thing to do is to take yourself and to demonstrate, until people respond to your cries. That is exactly what is happening. Kindred sensibilities create a sort of a tribe which provides safety for people to feel empathy.

Distortion: Because you cannot make the body lie

For me, it’s important to follow the trends, but I am also abhorred by their distortion. We live in the time of the sterile aesthetics, uniform beauty, plastic surgeries, computers, high tech, and countless other options to modify our bodies. Through photographs, I overstate all those available possibilities for the corporal transformation. We long for the change from the outside, unaware how much our emotional states disturb our physical bodies. The bottled and supressed emotions make us ill. In the series of the surreal photographs, I show the devastating effect of the emotions on the body. It results in distorted bodies, bodies with jointed parts, bodies that have three legs, four arms, headless or two-headed bodies, bodies with runaway or broken faces… Disturbing bodies but with a surprising harmony. Despite the dislocation and obvious displacement of the parts, everything on those bodies is proportional and graceful. There are no abnormalities, because photography just reveals the body as a physical expression of the emotions: pain, sadness, hopelessness…all the natural states which the mirror cannot reflect. Sorrow is not just a sad face, it decapitates.