Lucid Dream (Night Journey), 2013, Oil on Canvas, 244cm x 183cm
The Door, 2013, Oil on Canvas, 45cm x 45cm
Self Portrait (Fragments), 2013, Acrylic on Canvas, 45cm x 45cm
Three Stages of Life, 2013, Fabric Collages on Canvas, 364cm x 107cm
Three Stages of Life
The Three Stages of Life draws inspiration from the cosmological philosophy of Claudius Ptolemy, the ancient Greek thinker who envisioned the universe as a system of concentric spheres, each ruled by a celestial body that governs a distinct rhythm of human existence. Within this cosmic order lie seven stages of life, Infant, Childhood, Teenager, Young Adult, Adulthood, Retirement, and Elderly, a continuum that mirrors the planetary alignment of human destiny.
For this work, I center on the first three, Infant, Childhood, and Teenager, the primordial triad that shapes the essence of identity. These stages are the constellation of becoming, where memory, perception, and imagination first awaken. Each embodies a different vibration of innocence and transformation from the stillness of birth to the restless bloom of youth.
The material execution of the work is deeply autobiographical. I deconstruct and repurpose fragments of personal garments worn during these phases of my life. Each fabric cut, fold, and seam becomes a mnemonic gesture, a tactile reconstruction of time. Through the process of assemblage, I translate memory into texture, turning fabric into topography, a living archive of emotion. As the materials intertwine, they form a map of the psyche, where every hue, thread, and fiber traces the evolution of taste, emotion, and identity.
Conceptually, the use of clothing embodies the phenomenology of touch, a dialogue between body and memory. Fabric, once in contact with skin, becomes an extension of the self, when reconfigured, it transforms into an emotional artifact. Each piece carries an aura of nostalgia, inviting the viewer into an introspective space where the personal becomes universal.
Through this act of reconstruction, Three Stages of Life becomes both ritual and reflection, a meditation on how the self expands and dissolves across time. The work transforms materiality into metaphor, fabric into memory, colour into emotion, and form into the geometry of existence. It is an inquiry into the continuum of being, where the past does not vanish but folds itself quietly into the present like layers of cloth stitched into the body of time.