DIGITAL CABINETS

The inspiration for this series draws from the cabinets of curiosities of the 17th century, which served as precursors to today’s infotainment environment. These cabinets were not only about promoting knowledge but also about asserting power and the pleasure of ownership. Ownership was wielded as social currency, allowing individuals to exercise power or superiority in society.

With the rise of digital and AI-assisted media, the paradigms of ownership and function over digital assets have shifted. Today, we and our virtual assistants are both creators and collectors of our own curiosities. Beyond this societal context, the purpose of this series involves a creative practice of mining the archive. Everything is captured, used, and reused in a cyclical process of birth, death, and rebirth, serving as a metaphor for the creative process.

Personal histories, memories, experimentation, and the establishment of new vocabularies of visual phenomena are celebrated within this series. These cabinets are generated through graphic software, using composited illustrations based on digital photographs from my personal archives. The possibilities of these tampered, remastered, and re-authored digital objects are endless, sparking a discussion on knowledge, ownership, power, creation, birth, death, and rebirth.