Artwork description: The work explores the body as a place where experiences and emotions are held, leading through confrontation with them towards presence and a return to oneself.

Artwork description long: What if the body remembers what the mind has forgotten? The Body as a Place of Truth is an immersive installation about losing contact with oneself through relationships, life experiences and external expectations, and about finding a way back. It is an experience of a ritual of passage and the process takes place through direct contact with the body. The work is based on the belief that the body stores experience. Events, emotions, relationships and ways of adapting to the world leave traces in it. The body communicates what is true for us through needs, boundaries and reactions, even when we cannot yet put it into words. The installation consists of three spaces, each representing a different stage of recovering contact with oneself. Visitors first encounter a transparent glass figure representing the original, authentic part of ourselves. They are invited to write painful words and sentences they carry within themselves onto its surface. Layer by layer, the inscriptions create a shell. The second space is a dark tunnel, a space of confrontation with what is difficult and unknown. Fabric touches the visitor’s body, shifting attention from vision towards bodily perception. The final space surrounds the viewer with suspended glass structures inspired by fascia. Pulsating light and a recording of breath create the impression that the installation is breathing. A mattress invites the participant to lie down, rest and reconnect with themselves.