LIZARD BRAIN
Exhibition / Personal project
The paralyzing power of fear
When fear takes over, it shapes every decision I make.
I'm giving form to the subconscious thoughts that poison me quietly, without me even noticing.
I imagine this fear as a lizard- or snake-like creature. It’s my enemy, dripping venom into my mind.
I can’t get rid of it. I can’t cut it out of myself.
Because it’s an essential part of me.
You can’t reason with it.
You can’t make peace.
So I have to learn how to keep it under control.
But this fight doesn’t lead to balance, only new extremes.
That’s what I try to capture in these images.
Sometimes I trap the creature in spiked cages. Other times it’s my brain you see chained up.
I fight it with its own tools. The lizard deserves the same hell it drags me into when I’m weak.
Like fear itself, the creature is always mutating.
That shape-shifting shows up in the diversity of the illustrations. Every scene, every figure is another version of the same beast.
No matter how hard I try to lock it up, it always escapes.
Because we are one and the same. The guard and the prisoner are the same person.
