From Pop Gesture to Organic Process

My practice did not begin as organic. It began close to pop and conceptual strategies.

Early works were shaped by recognizable references, everyday objects, humor, and cultural gestures. These works relied on visibility and recognition, where meaning was anchored in ideas and cultural citation. The idea often arrived first, followed by the search for an appropriate form. While this approach offered clarity, it also placed limits on how the work could evolve.

Over time, this way of working began to feel insufficient. The outcome was often known too early, leaving little space for uncertainty, material resistance, or transformation. I became increasingly interested in what might happen if control was loosened—if the work were allowed to change direction, adapt to conditions, or remain unresolved.

This shift occurred gradually through making rather than through theory. As I began working more intensively with materials such as atlas pages, paper, bandages, sound, and found objects, the process itself started to shape the work. These materials carry both physical and historical weight. Atlas pages fade, tear, and fragment; their printed certainties—borders, names, coordinates—become unstable once layered, repositioned, or partially obscured. Instead of illustrating an idea, the materials demanded attention and response.

In this way, ideas became starting points rather than fixed outcomes. Meaning no longer preceded the work but emerged through process, repetition, and spatial decision-making.

This approach is evident in the installation Color Theory. The work is composed of colored bandages arranged along architectural edges—between wall and floor, around corners, and across thresholds. While the initial idea engages with color, language, and perception, the final form is determined through placement, accumulation, and response to the specific site. The texts printed on the bandages are poetic, fragmented, and sometimes contradictory. Readability shifts depending on distance, lighting, and movement through the space.

Rather than presenting a closed statement about color, the work allows meaning to remain unstable. Color functions not as a system, but as experience—subjective, emotional, and culturally loaded. The repetition of bandages introduces associations with care, injury, repair, and resilience, yet these meanings are never fixed. The installation adapts to each location, responding to architecture rather than imposing a predetermined layout.

Atlas pages appear across multiple works as both material and metaphor. When maps are layered, suspended, or partially concealed, their authority is disrupted. Geography becomes fragmented and provisional, mirroring experiences of movement, displacement, and reorientation. The atlas no longer describes a stable world; it becomes a surface for negotiation, memory, and reconfiguration.

Works involving passports and objects associated with movement follow this same process-led approach. While these materials carry strong symbolic weight, they are altered through layering, stamping, and reassembly. Their meanings are complicated rather than resolved, remaining open to multiple readings related to belonging, restriction, mobility, and absence.

Working organically, in this context, is not about spontaneity alone. It is about responsiveness. The practice involves listening—to materials, to space, and to context—and allowing those elements to influence decisions. Control remains partial, and uncertainty is not something to overcome but something to work with.

This evolution reflects my broader engagement with themes of movement, memory, fragility, and identity. These are not treated as stable conditions but as ongoing processes—formed through repetition, displacement, repair, and change.

What began close to pop and conceptual gesture has shifted toward an organic, process-led practice grounded in material behavior and spatial awareness. The work does not aim to explain or conclude. Instead, it remains open-ended, allowing meaning to accumulate slowly and remain in flux.

In this way, the practice mirrors lived experience: movement without guaranteed arrival, repair without complete restoration, and a continuous negotiation between intention and emergence. The work exists not as a finished statement, but as a state of becoming.