I have a way of seeing the world that I did not choose, yet it appears in everything I make, not as a problem to solve but as the very thing that makes the work mine,
I have a way of seeing shaped by every room I entered, every person I watched, every loss that rearranged my understanding, and every pleasure that what I had already suspected,
I have a way of seeing that sometimes embarrasses me, it feels less sophisticated than the person I am trying to become, until I make something from it and someone tells me it is exactly what they needed,
What if the perspective I have been apologetic about or uncertain whether to lead with is the most irreplaceable thing I bring to every room and every page,
I have a way of seeing the world that is entirely mine, claiming it is the creative act I keep postponing, it means accepting that I no longer need to become someone else…
I created something and watched someone find something I hadn’t intended, but then I realized that their discovery was genuine, even if I hadn’t noticed it myself,
I created something and discovered my perspective afterward, making bypassed the self-examination that kept approaching the truth from the wrong angle,
I created something and revisited it years later, finally recognizing what I had been trying to understand, not as a conclusion but as something that had been waiting to be seen,
What does the body of work I have made reveal about what has truly occupied me all these years, beyond what I have told myself I was trying to create,
I created something and found my perspective in it, humbled by how much more specific and honest the work was than my explanations to those who asked about it,
I have tried to make a point and produce something accurate, but sometimes felt uninspired because I might have constructed it from an external perspective, disregarding my own viewpoint on what might be worth sharing,
I have tried to make a point and felt its flatness, then made something more carelessly and found an aliveness the careful version had completely excluded,
I have tried to make a point and watched it move no one, including myself, until I understood that I had chosen the truth that felt safe over the one that was keeping me awake,
What am I preoccupied with that I translate into something more acceptable or strategic before letting it into my work, I’m not sure I have the right to express the real thing,
have tried to make a point and then made something without a point, found the reflection intact still I keep constructing messages as if I haven’t learned the difference…
I have been inspired by people whose work I admired and created something unique because I absorbed and transformed their work,
I have been inspired by people and felt embarrassed by the resemblance in my early work, forgetting that visible influence is not a flaw but evidence of a voice still forming,
I have been inspired by people, gradually moved beyond imitation, not by forcing originality but by following the spaces between what I tried to copy and what naturally emerged in me,
What influences have I yet to transform into something recognizably mine, what might the work become if I allowed them to change inside me instead of borrowing their original form,
I have been inspired by people by everything I have loved, even in similarities, the self that made the work was already present, turning what I received into something new…
Watchwords:
They found in it what I did not know was there,
The point assembled from the outside in sat airless,
The careless version held what the careful one excluded,
My voice kept showing up in the spaces between the copying,
The self could not help but be present in the making...
Here is Tikatarot, who dares you to answer the question, “Who am I?”..
As and will always be reminding you to dream: