The Flesh of a Moth critiques how we have distorted our relationship with reality by obsessing over nostalgia, transforming a rare natural emotion into a readily available form of self-medication.

By fixating on the past, we diminish the value of our memories, cheapening them in the pursuit of comfort.

This installation merges sculpture and photography to challenge viewers’ relationship with nostalgia and memory. 

Featuring a cocoon-like form, the sculpture is suspended from a metal armature and parodies a moth’s evolutionary cycle—eerily similar to that of nostalgia. Illuminated by a single light on the interior, the patchwork mimicry of a cocoon houses Polaroid images, depicting locations from my childhood, that symbolize the fragility of memory and its fetishization through nostalgic imagery. Once genuine and spontaneous, these memories are now tokenized into a curated, idealized past.

Encased in a visibile, but untouchable state, the tormented nature of the housing depicts attempts to break into what should be left to germinate in its own time, yet our addiction to nostalgia forbids us from leaving it alone. We obsessively claw at the light: a cocoon that represents the flesh we’re constructed from and our inherent desires to relive those moments.

At its core, The Flesh of a Moth utilizes my own obsession with the past as a vehicle to challenge society’s addiction to nostalgia. It urges viewers to reflect on how their obsession distorts their present reality by entrapping them in place and encourages reconsideration of the role of memories in shaping identity in an increasingly digitized world.