Upon that vast and foreign ceiling

This project explores the longing for stability in an impermanent world. Through photos from various countries and imagined archival portraits, it traces a journey shaped by displacement and emotional turbulence, revealing a fragile attempt to remain stil

There was never peace in my family. I grew up in constant relocation, in an anxious and unstable environment without any solid ground. Over time, escaping chaos became a way of life — I keep wandering in search of a perfect home that keeps slipping further away.

Buddhist teachings say that suffering arises from the desire to hold on to what is impermanent. My project is about the longing to find stability in a world that, by its nature, is movement and decay. It feels like an endless search for Shambhala — an unattainable peace that exists only in the imagination. I traveled across different countries, trying to find visual traces of “home” — from childhood, from the subconscious, from fantasy. But what appeared in the images was not peace, but anxiety, tension, vulnerability. My gaze involuntarily captured the very things I was trying to escape.

In my work, I use photographs taken on the road and archival portraits of strangers to whom I assign a sense of closeness. Sometimes they remind me of those I’ve lost. Sometimes — of who I could have been. They become an imagined family, links in the chain I always lacked.

This project is about inner exhaustion, fear, constant movement, and a fragile longing for stillness. About the attempt to remain — within myself, in this world, in a moment of silence, even if fleeting.