These images come from archives that carry the instructions on how beauty and belonging ought to appear, how to be seen.

In cutting across the before and after, I’m not reimagining these women but rupturing the conditions of their visibility. The gesture interrupts the expected transformation. It asks what happens when the gaze is broken, when looking no longer follows the rules it was given.

The negative space acts as both refusal and protection. While they fracture the image, they also guard it, creating space for something more secreted to exist. In that space, the women return to themselves, even if only partially.

I’m interested in what emerges in that interruption, the tension between aspiration and disappearance, between being perfected and being erased. These works don’t seek to restore the image but to hold it open, long enough to feel what’s underneath the performance of looking.