If I Had Been There I

This series investigates the mechanisms of authority that operate through the body and the processes by which identity is rendered acceptable. In my figurative oil paintings I intertwine human and animal forms in an attempt to make visible the vulnerability of the subject before normative structures. Bodily interventions such as displacement, erasure and fragmentation remind us that identity is not fixed but continually shaped.

The recurring images of goats, sheep and rams in my work are historically linked to sacrificial rituals and to a culture of obedience. These animals are not merely symbolic elements; they are metaphors for bodily sacrifice and for being reduced to forms of life deemed reasonable. Authority here ceases to be an abstract concept and appears as an invisible structure that regulates, limits and re-shapes the subject.

In the portraits where the human face merges with the animal face, the process of converting identity into acceptable forms is called into question. While the animal image represents the expectation of obedience, the human face points to the space of subjecthood that risks being lost in this process. Fading contours and surreal transitions make visible the crack between the moment the individual is rendered passive and the possibility of resistance.

This series proposes that the subject is not only something held under pressure, but also a structure seeking the possibility of existing and transforming within that pressure. The body here is both the field of power's intervention and the starting point of a potential for liberation.