A selection of shiny fragments
Throughout this project, I moved almost like a magpie through images, materials and symbols that kept catching my attention. Religious ornaments, celebrity bodies, Met Gala looks, digital filters and plastic sequins are placed next to one another until unexpected relationships begin to appear. A sacred object can start to resemble camp spectacle; a celebrity image can take on the status of an icon; a cheap shiny surface can reveal how desire and judgment often exist in the same glance.
Rather than building a linear archive, the project creates a visual field in which meanings shift through comparison. Camp aesthetics, religious imagery and celebrity culture become tools to question why certain surfaces are read as valuable, excessive, artificial or believable.
The final installation translates this research into a space between altar, stage and social gathering. Processional banners, reflective elements and a jacquard woven altar piece create an environment where devotion, spectacle and self-presentation overlap. The viewer enters a setting in which shine does not simply decorate, but performs: it attracts, convinces, exposes and keeps changing under the conditions of looking.
