I Was Something Else
This project reflects on unrealised talents as fragments of identity that never had the chance to fully develop. Starting from my own experience, I return to a moment in adolescence when I wanted to pursue art, but moved in another direction under family expectations and the promise of stability. Years later, after burnout, I recognised the same pattern across my family.
My father, once a painter, photographer, and swimmer, left these practices behind as his youth unfolded alongside political and social instability. My brother abandoned music and sport under peer influence and external pressure. My mother, with a strong ability for communication, never had the space or confidence to recognise it as a path. Across generations, talent appeared early but was not sustained.
The project approaches adolescence as a critical period where identity is shaped, yet often constrained. Instead of being a time for exploration, it becomes a moment where direction is imposed and uncertainty grows.
Through layered images combining vibrant abstract colour photographs of the art practice with archival photographs, the work brings together potential and interruption, asking what remains of who we were and what might still persist. Colour represents the hope, dreams, and optimism of adolescence, while archival images, often in black and white, reflect the nostalgia for the time when everything was still ahead and reality of adult life shaped by compromise.
