The circular enclosure

In Jorge Luis Borges’ story, The Circular Ruins, a man arrives at the ruins of a temple in the jungle – the circular enclosure – with a supernatural purpose to create another man, piece by piece. Later, he realises that he is himself the product of someone else’s dream. As in Borges’ story, dreams and reality overlap in my project. It’s a series of images where time has somehow been suspended, and where what remains is confusing; as if what we see isn’t real, but unconscious. These images work as sediments with no spatial or temporal connection. They meet in another place – or accumulate in a crevice – after being carried by the same river.

Fascinated by the mind’s ability to create images without a conscious or rational intervention – especially when we toss and turn, or we’re absent-minded and absorbed – I’ve tried to represent the idiosyncrasy of those unconscious thoughts through my editing process. The effect is enhanced by the use of particular codes they operate with: fragmentation, repetition, loops, time skips, images as echoes of other images, stairs that go nowhere, landscapes as mental places, and elements that disappear and reappear – transformed into another thing.

The resulting series – formed of photographs I took in Iceland, old images I found in antique shops, and photographs I took more recently – works as a set of hidden clues to be deciphered or unravelled. Ultimately, it presents a dialogue on how both photographic editing and our unconscious mental processes can disrupt the inherent significance of an image.

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