White as Soot

“White as Soot” is a project about the coexistence of opposite states: the personal and the collective, fragility and construction, freedom and the inner pressure of the system. The title, taken from the folk expression “How are things? — White as soot,” becomes a metaphor of doubleness and contradiction as the basic condition of the environment.

The artist uses stock images, artificial intelligence and photo-collage, deliberately distancing herself from authorship. These are spaces without a definite geography, yet instinctively recognisable. Behind every window of a high-rise lie countless private fates; from the outside all the windows look alike, but inside there are unique stories.

Architectural and landscape images are joined with a layer of porcelain flowers that act as a fragile form of resistance to uniformity. Through the layering of ceramic tile, print, painting and porcelain I consider how rigid social and visual frameworks coexist with vulnerability, memory and the possibility of personal choice.

“The themes of fragility and contradiction matter to me; I often work with porcelain, a material with a dualism built into it. It is eternal — unless it breaks,” the artist says.