Alexis Vasilikos - All I Ever Wanted Was to Disappear
Ever since I can remember myself I had the recurring feeling of wanting to disappear, to vanish, to escape. When I was younger, I was trying to escape social norms and any kind of systemic structures. Later on, this feeling took the form of the spiritual quest, trying to dissolve the mind in awareness through meditation and self-inquiry. Photography has been my constant companion in these disappearing acts on a daily basis. The creative process immerses the finite mind into its infinite source and when one is in this state, the experience of unity with all creation becomes obvious, it's an alignment with the cosmic creativity. Not a personal affair but rather the dissolution of the person itself.
I couldn't articulate it in this manner before, but I can see clearly now, that all my life has been driven by this desire to transcend, to find a way out of identification, back to the infinite realm. all I ever wanted was to disappear is a body of photographs that revolve around this longing to be united with the totality, to find a way out of every position, to return to the experience of being nothing and through nothing back to being one with everything.