Both Womb and Tomb, 2024

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Experimental photograms on Ilford Multigrade V RC Deluxe Satin (50.8 x 61cm)

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In ‘Both Womb and Tomb’, the artist turns to the primordial architecture of caves; spaces that have long symbolized shelter, mystery, origin, and burial. Each of the images is created through a camera-less photographic process, using sculptural forms and water, exposed directly onto photosensitive paper. This method allows the work to function indexically: the sculptural objects leave behind a trace, a direct imprint of their presence, capturing a memory of their form without the mediation of a lens. The resulting images resemble cross-sections of cavern interiors; hollows, chambers, and mineral contours emerging from darkness. These forms feel simultaneously geological and bodily, evoking the layered sediment of ancient caves as well as the intimate inner spaces of the human body. This ambiguity reflects the title’s central idea: a cave can be both a womb and a tomb, holding the beginnings of life and the remnants of its passing. By allowing water, light, and objects to interact unpredictably, the images created hover between representation and abstraction. Variations across the series suggest states of formation and dissolution, echoing the slow erosive processes that shape caves themselves. Through this interplay of physical trace and fluid transformation, ‘Both Womb and Tomb’ becomes a meditation on memory, origin, and the intertwined cycles of creation and decay, inviting viewers into the quiet, echoing spaces where beginnings and endings meet.