Silver Medal in the category « Conceptual / Hybrid »

I placed my love in a place where, at that time, I did not know whether it was right or wrong. That love, like a living being with a body and a voice, remained on my body as wounds, and in my mind as anxious attachment, obsession, and a fear of being loved.

It came very close, close enough for me to believe that I was seen, that I was being held. Yet it was also what caused me to lose the ability to recognize the boundaries of safety. I could no longer distinguish between love and control; between reassurance and violence.

As time passed, the wounds healed, but the sense of instability remained, quietly and persistently, like a nameless echo. I carried it in the way I looked at myself, in moments of avoidance, and in the doubt of whether I deserved to be loved without pain.

Now, that love seems to have been placed on a shelf like a souvenir. No longer something to hold onto, but something to remember. A reminder of a younger version of myself, who loved wholeheartedly, was deeply wounded, and survived.

This body of work is a journey of looking back. Not to accuse, nor to justify, but to confront. I engage with this memory through images, to understand that pain was once a part of me, but not the entirety of who I am.

"To Mourn My Reflection" is a farewell to an old image of myself, an image once distorted by fear and insecurity. At the same time, it is a way for me to learn to value the present, to build inner stability, and to prepare myself to move forward in the search for a sense of safety, both in love and within myself.