Artist's Statement

‘Tunnel Vision’ was an art project that stood up to the expectation of the labyrinth, taking many of my initial plans and ideas to a dead end and leading me instead through some less expected alleys.

My aim was to build an architectural space, a maze of polyester corridors and blind avenues that would create both a space of transition and destination.

The design was based on the lines of my fingerprint reflecting ideas of fate and identity. I sought to create a place that is imaginary, metaphorical and mystical but at the same time would display its rudimentary assembly, crude physical construction, its human touch, faults and imperfections. A place of alternative perception where one could lose track of direction and of the outside world but where maybe one could find the sense of self. Something spiritual set in industrial and artificial reality.

I thought of the labyrinth as a symbol of life that invites one in, for which intuition is required to negotiate it, but that can be comprehended and understood only from outside, from above, from far away.

To build the tunnels, I employed four migrant workers. Migrants are perceived as outsiders, people that are in transit, in movement, that often hope to reshape their fate through a change of geographical location.

I also thought about the polytunnels in which our tomatoes and strawberries, daffodils and roses are grown, isolated from sun and wind, grown without soil by poorly paid people who spend a large share of their time in this simulated environment.

The topic of migration often recurs in my work posing the questions “free from what?” and “free for what?” I am also interested in the ethics of aesthetics, the means of artistic production and its use and relation to power and politics.

The first construction of ‘Tunnel Vision’ took place in the courtyard of the UCL Slade School of Arts in London. The setting of the installation presented an uncomfortable juxtaposition of often well-to-do art students watching anxious labourers building a temporary construction of dubious purpose.

After three days, the workers got their first payment, got drunk and never came back to work. The project was abandoned. It stood there among the classical sculptures and imperial buildings, annoying people and spoiling the landscape.

Rather than a temple of meditative beauty and romantic escapism the project became a monument to and statement by the workers.
It spoke of the disharmony between idea and reality, disrupted plans, choices that are defined by financial and social opportunities and ideals that turn into ruins and vice versa, i.e.: a reality that gives birth to ideals; ruins that claim their own beauty.