Figure, Memory, Identity

The human figure is central to my work, but it is never treated as a portrait.

It does not represent an individual, nor does it aim to describe a specific identity.

The figure functions as a site.

A place where memory, movement, and history intersect without becoming narrative.

I am not interested in the figure as a subject to be defined.

What matters is its condition — how it occupies space, how it holds tension, how it appears and withdraws.

Faces are often blurred, fragmented, or partially erased.

This is not an act of concealment, but a refusal of fixation.

Identity, for me, is not something stable that can be captured visually.

It is layered, shifting, and often incomplete.

Memory operates in a similar way.

It does not present itself as a clear image, but as a series of impressions.

Fragments surface, overlap, and disappear.

The painted figure becomes an archive of these movements.

Not a record of events, but a trace of what has passed through the body.

Gesture plays a crucial role in this process.

It introduces uncertainty.

It interrupts precision.

It prevents the image from becoming illustrative.

The figure resists being read as a character.

It remains open, suspended between presence and disappearance.

Cultural identity, when it enters the work, does so indirectly.

It is not declared, but embodied.

It exists in posture, in tension, in silence.

The body carries memory without explaining it.

Painting allows these elements to coexist without resolution.

Figure, memory, and identity are not separated — they overlap, contradict, and inform one another.

The result is not a representation, but a state.

A moment where the body holds what cannot be fully articulated.