Gone & Leaving, 2024
Handmade accordion artist book & installation
When I think about this work, I don’t only think about departures. I think about abuse, isolation, friendship, and obsession. For a long time, I avoided naming these things. But the work doesn’t come from a vague place, and neither do I. Gone & Leaving came from urgency. It wasn’t planned, it was instinctive. I was capturing the scenes I found myself in, trying to keep up with a life that felt like it had slipped away. The project began after years in a co-dependent relationship where I lost my sense of self. Leaving felt like both rupture and release. I found myself in New York, surrounded by movement and possibility, but not fully knowing who I was.
I started collecting fragments: painkillers, a subway fine, a number that kept appearing, diary entries never meant to be read. There was chaos, but also connection. In the friendships I formed, I felt seen again.
The book brings together photographs, handwritten notes, and found materials in a double-sided accordion structure. Its extended format allows the work to unfold continuously, without a fixed beginning or end, mirroring the way memory loops and overlaps. Imperfections in print and texture are intentionally preserved, holding onto the rawness of the moment in which it was made. It sits between breakdown and rebuilding, between losing yourself and slowly returning.
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