Aphasis is a mixed-media photographic series exploring the instability of identity and communication.
Cyanotype portraits printed on delicate Japanese paper are fragmented, layered, and partially obscured, resisting clear recognition. As the image begins to dissolve, language follows, shifting from utterance to silence.
Process / Material
Cyanotype on Bib Tengujo paper.
Layered and embedded into primed wooden panels
The Series
Aphasis I — [ a ]
Aphasis II — [ am ]
Aphasis III — [ aw ]
Aphasis IV — [ aww ]
Aphasis V — [ uhm ]
Aphasis VI — [ uh ]
Aphasis VII — [ ... ]
Aphasis VIII — [ . ..nevermind ]
APHASIS
Artist Statement
Aphasis reflects on my experience of communication shaped by living abroad. Upon arriving in a foreign country, I felt that an essential part of my personality had been restricted, reduced, even amputated. Fluent in my mother tongue, I suddenly struggled to form the simplest sentence. At eighteen, I had memorised dozens of poems and could recite them at will. Two decades later, and a thousand miles away, I found myself paralysed by the prospect of speaking to a stranger, acutely aware of my accent, my hesitation, my inadequacy.
This was my aphasia, not clinical, but lived. A silence imposed not by the inability to think, but by the fear of articulation. A scream held back. Aphasia with emphasis: Aphasis.
The work also reflects on a quieter, internal form of aphasia that develops over time. We are told that an image is worth a thousand words, yet what happens when the image itself becomes unstable? When it fades, fractures, or resists clarity? Memory does not preserve faithfully; it distorts, omits, and reconstructs. It softens what is painful, or reshapes it into something unrecognisable. The images we carry within us are often incomplete, eroded, or misaligned with their origin.
If these internal images were translated into language, they would not form coherent sentences. They would hesitate, repeat, collapse mid-word. They would stutter.
Through fragmented cyanotype portraits, torn, layered, and partially erased, Aphasis explores the limits of both visual and verbal communication. The work moves between emergence and disappearance, between articulation and silence. It reflects on the impossibility of fully expressing oneself, to others, and even to oneself, when both language and image begin to fail.
Mixed media
Cyanotype on Bib Tengujo paper
Wooden panel
Lyne 2026
APHASIS
Installation layout
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