Blurred line,
hard cut
Traveling the world, I felt at ease and comfortable in distant places, but Záhorská Ves, the village across the border from home, felt distinctly different. I hadn't crossed this border in the first 27 years of my life. Nobody I knew did. It was an unspoken rule, something so abstract and absurd that it never even crossed my mind. That's just how it was, and how it seemed it would always be.
In my project, I aim to disrupt the stagnant line that is embedded in our minds like a charcoal stroke on paper. I want to magnify and blur it to the point of invisibility, allowing a shift in perception. Only then are we able to see our connections rather than our divisions.
The landscape acts as a silent witness in my story, where it appears as though nothing changes, yet everything is in constant flux. I am not solely focusing on scenic views, but on the details and nuances I can find within an environment. What does it mean to be a 'border girl' and how are landmarks ingrained in one's identity?
In search of answers, I traveled back to the places of my childhood and to Melilla, a Spanish enclave in Morocco, now one of the most heavily guarded places in Europe. It was there that I encountered the tangible presence of a border for the first time and found echoes of my village's past. The absurdity that arises when you divide land in two and the tensions that emerge with it allowed me to see my own history far away from home. And through that blur, I suddenly recognized this landscape and its story as my own.