EXIST

130 X 130
 
Mixed media
 
I painted it during COVID, when everything seemed to be closing in. One word kept appearing everywhere in nearly empty public spaces: EXIT. Emergency signs, glowing, purely functional. After seeing them repeatedly, I began to hear something else: EXIT started to sound like EXIST.
I chose to work with that proximity. I kept the idea of an exit, but shifted it into an affirmation. In the painting, “EXIST” barely appears, repeated within the blue, like a fragile yet persistent presence.
This was at the core of my project Exit to Exist. That shift also took on a physical form: I reappropriated the aesthetic of EXIT signs to create lamps, moving from emergency signage to an intimate light, a way of keeping the idea of existence illuminated.