In this series I re-explore my current home, where space transcends its materialistic dimensions, and becomes a condition that meanders between memories and the present. Space is depicted as an experience, wherein the physical objects that construct what we conventionally understand as space are mere catalysts for this emotional experience that accompanies us throughout our lives, evolving with each introduction to a new space. In this intimate exploration of home, I fail to sustain my objective position as a photographer and find myself irresistibly reshaping my physical reality and falling in the trap of the past.

 

The photographs capture different areas and occurrences in my house that are contaminated by memories of the past. The memories refer to an ever unfulfilled experience of ‘home’; the memories of the two years that I lived in Iraq, together with the imagined home that I sketched throughout the years of exile. This memory is too powerful that it haunts my daily attempts to reconcile my relationship with the current home/spaces that I occupy.

 

As we can see, the spaces documented dissolve into an absent present, wherein the dark corrupts what is present revealing an external space that is so haunting and poisonous. Thus memories here gain another dimension that is beyond romanticism and nostalgia, appearing as oppressive and selfish, interrupting my attempts to connect with my physical surroundings. So in a way the dark (black) areas of each photograph reflect an unfulfilled space that will always remain charged with an unconscious desire to relive the past and the imaginary.