This symbolist series of composites emerged from my subconscious in the spring of 2025 in response to US policies of displacement and dehumanization. I made photographs of clay figures (my own and those of ceramic artists Jindra Viková, Claire Curneen, and Dirk Staschke) to suggest subjects deprived of identity, dignity, and personhood. I layered these images into murky and tangled environments to externalize inner turmoil. The figures appear both human and vaguely alien, but all share a striking sense of psychic nakedness and vulnerability.

The series allegorizes suffering as a darkness of the soul  but also suggests our struggle toward enlightenment. I use the dichotomy of two mediums (clay and photography) to stress the tension between the fragility of human life and our desire for meaning. Clay is earth and an ancient metaphor for the ephemerality of our existence — earth to earth and dust to dust. Photography is light, reflection, vision, and symbolic of revelation. We are both earth and light.