Aliens (2021-)
This ongoing documentary project "Aliens" investigates the presence and meaning of artificial fences and barriers within human habitats, and how these structures encroach upon the natural environment, alienating other species — and ultimately, ourselves.
Fences and barriers have long become inseparable from modern life. Their unnaturalness lies precisely in how naturally they have embedded themselves into our everyday environments. Ubiquitous yet overlooked, these structures serve as tools for marking territory, securing construction sites, and isolating hazardous areas — carving space into an 'inside' and an 'outside.' They exist to grant those who erect them a sense of exclusivity: mine, not yours.
But these man-made divisions are more than physical boundaries. They mirror psychological separations within human societies and extend humanity’s impulse to monopolise space, resources, and capital. Over time, they evolve into abstract entities — mediators of spatial relations that cut through landscapes with a Möbius strip-like non-duality. In this paradigm, every crossing between 'inside' and 'outside' is rendered an intrusion, and every person, animal, or entity becomes a relative alien to a particular space.
This project places these overlooked yet omnipresent divisions under the lens, treating them as subjects in their own right. It asks viewers to consider: in the environments we’ve created, are we being protected, or are we being confined? What is it that we seek to claim exclusively, and whom — or what — are we choosing to other, to alienate?
- 2025 “Habitat” Exhibition, Fringe Arts Bath, Roseberry Road Studios, Bath, UK