I wance met Jesus in a coille, 2021

This project was Inspired by J.G. Ballard’s “The Atrocity Exhibition”, in particular the prescient, psychosexual 1967 piece, “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan”, as well as the strange case of Ron dos Santos, a prolific pyromaniac, who purported to have religious experiences  during arson and who would often leave written manifestos at his crime scenes (usually forests).

Developed following new research of the archives of the Institute of Legal Medicine & Forensic Sciences (Portugal), this project can  be seen as a speculative investigation of the relationship between fire and death, pyromania and desire.

By focusing on the hand, as my primary subject, the images guide us through a visual journey of our worst fears, impulses, anxieties and apprehensions.

As an organ of performance the hand serves as eyes for the blind, the mute talk with it, and it has become a symbol of salutation, supplication, and condemnation.

But in a sense the human hand is a paradox. The hand is used as a tool, as a symbol, and as a weapon. It is the hand that writes the letter, that sets the fire, that takes the life.

Each image within this project is a condensed novel. The series can be seen as a psychological study, a cataloguing of a series of disturbing experiments.

The line between inner and outer landscape has crumbled, the random universe of the modern age has broken down into cryptic fragments.