Forms of the Unseen
Medium: Inkjet Prints, Hand-made Soap, X-ray Film, Hyssop, Water
In Forms of the Unseen, I use X-ray film to explore what immigrants carry beneath the surface. This process exposes the unseen pressures felt by immigrants and first-generation individuals, whose experiences are often defined by the weight of uncertainty.
In this work, I extend my inquiry using bars of hyssop-scented soap. Each bar contains media images printed on X-ray film, capturing a fragment of public memory. These fragments reveal how images press onto the body and linger beneath the surface. Viewers are invited to wash their hands with the soaps, enacting a contradictory gesture: the desire to cleanse is inseparable from the act of erasing, smearing, and transferring the image onto the skin. Through these exchanges, the portraits and soaps expose the subtle ways visual culture implicates us, marking us even as we attempt to remove it.
