Dancing Flowers I
Exhaustion of the mind,
slowly breaking.
Unwhole and unholy,
rotting from the outside in,
grasping at your inner purity.
Hiding till there's nowhere to hide,
scars on your shedding skin,
discoloured, poorly stitched.
Hanging by a thread,
swinging between pain and detachment,
wanting to run but you're in pieces,
broken and blown into the ether.
Do you feel peace?
Bent over backwards for your loved ones,
drowning in what you keep inside.
Fighting yourself until you win,
but you're lost.
Falling apart,
all that you are drifts away from you,
blurred, out of reach.
You're spiralling in the dark,
dancing alone.
Dancing Flowers was created at a time when I found myself drained and emotionally exhausted. The creation process began in late 2019, and continued into early 2020. I made a makeshift studio in the spare room of my student house, using desk lamps for lighting, and my black winter coat as a neutral background. I took over 1300 photographs.
Composed of five individual series (six including the roses), the project represents different parts of mental exhaustion. It’s about all the emotions you might go through, when you realise you’re not in a good place, feeling and seeing yourself fall apart. Other parts of the project are about trying to put yourself back together again.
I used to view still life photography as meaningless. Desperately trying to figure out what to document for a university assignment, I was playing around with trinkets in my room and began to photograph them. I found that I was able to transform these mundane items into a sort of autobiographical work documenting what mental exhaustion felt like to me. It’s important that the work I create feels personal to myself, and that it will evoke emotion and hopefully conversation, with and from others.
Dancing Flowers is about how I viewed my own mind go through mental exhaustion and depression. I also had weekly therapy sessions at the time, and in combination with the development of the project, I found it to be incredibly healing. It’s not a cry for help, rather it’s a hand reaching out to those who have also gone through a time in their lives where they may have felt drained, lost, or broken.
The project was exhibited at Hotel Tugu in Bali, Indonesia, in 2022.
Dancing Flowers V
Dancing Flowers VI
Dancing Flowers VII
Dancing Flowers XXII
Dancing Flowers IX
Dancing Flowers X
Dancing Flowers XXVII
Dancing Flowers XI
Dancing Flowers XI
Dancing Flowers XII
Dancing Flowers XIII
Dancing Flowers XXV
Dancing Flowers XV
Dancing Flowers XVI
Dancing Flowers XXX
Dancing Flowers XXIX
Dancing Flowers XVII
Dancing Flowers XVIII
Dancing Flowers XIX
