The act of introducing has at times confused me; I often don’t know where to begin- which aspect of my life should I open up to people I have just met. I find introducing myself involves becoming vulnerable, and it was 2022, that I found myself having to introduce myself to a group of fellow artists. Not being fond of giving presentations, I decided to write each of them a letter. In retrospect, I see this was overly ambitious, and perhaps one collective letter might have been easier, but once I began I had to finish. I hate to leave things unfinished. And so what was just supposed to be a simple introduction to myself, turned into a larger project of looking at myself and my work. 

These letters, while being self-portraits of some sort, function also as mirrors in which I have discovered new ways of looking at myself. 

Emerging from a need to avoid the conventional presentation, I had accidentally initiated a dialogue with myself. And found myself having to dig deeper every time I wrote, to not repeat myself, to enquire further into what I was doing and why I was doing it. 

By writing these letters I have also been able to get to know parts of me that I didn’t know existed, memories that had been covered by the passage of time, like an old bike covered by years of dust. To discover again, a forgotten smell, a taste or the way the Bhima curves as it makes it way through the hills. And for that I am thankful. This has been a way to get to know myself better. Because under all the daily thoughts lie memories which seem to subconsciously drive the mind forward. So these letters have been an interesting autobiographical exercise which has allowed me to delve into those memories, and the frameworks which seems to guide my mind and so life. 

Presented at the Open Studio 2022, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, the Netherlands, 2022.