The last weekend of my Window Wonderland installation, aligned with my bday party, a cheeky “project” to get my closest people together, get them fed and drunk and happy and walk them in a big group to my Holborn installation and take one big final photo. I don’t remember last time i felt this happy, having these people show up, come from various corners of London to hang out with me in a tiny Bar Polski, to take over the place entirely and stay until it closed, to join me and stand there while I was putting the phone on a tripod, there was something magical about the collective joy of the whole situation, and the absolute gratitude in feeling loved and supported, extending beyond what we normally expect to get and usually don’t get from the closest family. Or we get it but it comes at a price and always feels a bit like a burden. I think in my work I combine my own feelings of abandonment and desperate need to be loved unconditionally, which is what I didn’t get enough of as a child because I was mostly expected to deal with serious adult problems on my own. Whereas this just felt pure, spontaneous and unforced. A lot of kindness from “chosen family” who had no needs or expectations from me. I feel this is the type of Art I want to do: installations that connect people and create a feeling of mutual joy and kindness and hope beyond material and transactional needs. Pieces that are not related in any way to religion but somehow interacting with them fulfills people on a spiritual level.
