'As If' is my latest site-specific photography installation that explores the instability of identity and perception as mediated by complex biological, digital, and geographical systems. Developed during an artist residency at SÍM in Reykjavík, Iceland in 2025, the installation was presentated within the three-artist focus exhibition, 'Embodied Morphologies'.
The installation is physically immersive, utilizing approximately 70 meters of handmade rice paper scrolls bearing 27 integrated images across a substantial 740 square meter area. This scale is integral to the work’s core research, which investigates the following questions:
- How does the sequencing and perspective of images shape the viewing experience within a photography installation?
- How can the still image be made more kinetic than moving images through the physical movement of the viewer?
- How do hybrid photographic methodologies (biological, digital, geographical) articulate the contested nature of selfhood in a mediated environment?
The project employs a groundbreaking hybrid methodology, positioning the body and technology as contested sites for self-reconstruction and the mapping of external environments. This method integrates three distinct, cross-timeline forms of image production:
1) Geographical Documentation: Standard photographs of actual Icelandic scenes, grounding the work in a physical reality.
2) Biological Collaboration: Microscopic imagery derived from cultivating bacteria over three weeks, utilizing the artist's personal biological samples (skin, hair, saliva, alongside soil), created in collaboration with a biologist.
3) Digital Generation: AI-modeled synthetic portrait images generated from the artist's extracted DNA code, visualizing a hypothetical individual across 36 years (my age) and different countries.
By integrating these multiple temporal and spatial processes, 'As If' transforms the act of walking through the installation into a cross-timeline journey. This non-linear arrangement generates a non-linear timeframe within the viewer's experience, prompting a critical re-evaluation of the human relationship to time, nature, and self, and challenging the perception of a singular, stable identity in a world saturated by technological mediation.
