MEMENTO VITAE (2022-2023)

This project began with my desire to learn more about my great-great-grandparents. I knew almost nothing. I only had names and places where they lived. So I went to the village where my great-great-grandfather lived to visit old countryside cemeteries and look for my family’s graves. The gravestones often looked abandoned, not always well-kept, overgrown with grass, some crosses had fallen. But what impressed me most was that on all these crosses and monuments, there were no names, no dates, nothing. The paint is short-lived, even the relief on the stones was clogged with mud and moss. Many of the graves had almost completely vanished beneath the ground.

There was something deeply symbolic about it, and also very sad and beautiful and complex. So it became the basis of the project that I want to present to you.

This project delves into the concept of human existence as an ongoing process of transformation intricately intertwined with the world around us. It explores the timeless theme of the delicate and finite nature of human life, while simultaneously acknowledging the enduring legacy it leaves within the universe. Every gravestone that descends into the earth represents not just an end, but a unique life and destiny, a fragment interwoven into the tapestry of the world’s historical narrative.

This project contemplates the perpetual flux of all existence on Earth, continuously interacting with other entities and undergoing rejuvenation. Out of the soil, grass and trees burgeon and thrive. Similarly, as humans pass away and merge back into the earth, we become part of the soil — thus perpetuating the cycle of life.

 While time may appear to efface our presence, in reality, we metamorphose into a different form, liberated from the confines of personality and consciousness. We are the skies, the trees, the grass — integral components of the intricate web of life, which is both exquisite and boundless in its essence.