Ivory Phantasms and Alien Pleasures

Inspired by the Welsh term hiraeth—a deep, melancholic longing or homesickness for a place, person, or time that may not exist or is no longer within reach—Ivory Phantasms and Alien Pleasures traces the cyclical nature of desire and illusion: how our efforts to satisfy our longings blur the threshold between what is real and what is imagined. Drawing on the tactile language of aged paper, translucent layers, ephemeral material, and shifting forms, this work explores the fragile boundary of fantasy and reality, asking what this dynamic reveals about our deeper need for meaning.

What compels us to feel connected to something we’ve never truly known? What causes the distortions in memory that drive this feeling of nostalgia for the unfamiliar? What do we believe we will find on the other side of these desires—a sense of place, of belonging, of identity—and what vessels do we use in our attempts to get there? Drawing from personal and shared experiences, I investigate the portals we use to escape into alternate realities, examining what fragments of real life we bring into our dream worlds and what remnants of those fantasies we carry back with us.

Lingering in the space where memory and imagination meet, Ivory Phantasms and Alien Pleasures explores what is revealed within the imagined worlds we construct in our attempts to make sense of the one we inhabit.