137
137
“In the threatening situation of the world today, when people are beginning to see that everything is at stake,
the projection-creating fantasy soars beyond the realm of earthly organizations and powers into the heavens,
into interstellar space, where the rulers of human fate, the gods, once had their abode in the planets...Even
people who would never have thought that a religious problem could be a serious matter that concerned
them personally are beginning to ask themselves fundamental questions. Under these circumstances it
would not be at all surprising if those sections of the community who ask themselves nothing were visited by
‘visions,’ by a widespread myth seriously believed in by some and rejected as absurd by others”.
C.G. Jung, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky
Digital culture can be understood as a form of projection—creating fantasy through qualities of indeterminacy and reproducibility. In this context, possibilities seem endless, and attention drifts toward the vastness of the sky, the universe, the infinite. The image loses its inherent meaning, transforming into something entirely new. It sheds its connection to reality, becoming a representation of infinite truths and realities. It can be seen as a layer of omnipresent information that continuously recombines new surfaces, figures, texts, glitches, and numbers.
Stepping away from the network and the World Wide Web, and seeking to decode the medium I am engaging with, 137 looks at the sinister marks left by time on the skin. The project reflects on the concept of the "sinister"—something strange, harmful, or oddly unsettling. It examines the forms and shapes of unusual pigmented marks on the skin. The idea of "sinister" has evolved over time; rooted in ancient beliefs of malice and evil, it has morphed over centuries, reshaping thoughts, patterns, and models. These pigmented marks on the skin, often regarded as the result of a disruption in skin cell development, have come to be defined as "sinister."
Part of an ongoing research project exploring themes of identity and the representation of the self in relation to new technologies, digital culture, and the image, this work seeks to question the connection between the personal and the universal through language, codes, image production, perception, and interaction.
From the microscopic world of skin cells to the expansive sky and beyond to the universe, 137 turns the camera inward. The body becomes a kind of cosmological case study, examining traces of time, life, and memory on the skin's surface. The unidentified objects in the work are scans of my moles, directly retrieved from my dermatologist's archive, where they are catalogued in a folder marked "137."