#11: Personal shadow

The project "Umbra" was very important for me, on a very personal level. I set out investigating the shadow in my work, and I soon realized that to investigate the shadow in my work, I would have to investigate my own personal shadows on a kind of psychological way.

The thing is that I lost my father when I was 22, and he ended his own life, sadly. He always had severe headaches and he had a brain surgery, but still he was in constant pain. And so he got really depressed. And he ended his own life. And this came as a huge shock to the whole family.

Many years later, this whole project felt like revisiting his death one more time. For a very long time, when I was younger or in my early 20s, I had been struggling with panic attacks. And I had this very strong existential fear of death. Maybe also, because my father was a doctor, sickness and death were always kind of present in the house somehow. But I think it's interesting that as an artist, you can kind of use your work as a catalyst almost to deal with these personal struggles. I think "Umbra" is a good example of that.