Epitaph for the Present
Epitaph for the Present is a body of work that reflects on grief, chronic pain, and the fragmentation of contemporary human experience. The paintings approach the body as a site of inscription—marked by personal loss while simultaneously shaped by broader conditions of political unrest, war, and technological acceleration.
Traditionally, an epitaph is written for the dead. Here, the term is used provisionally, suggesting a moment in which the present itself feels elegiac—unstable, unresolved, and under strain. Through layered surfaces, erasure, and interruption, the work records what it feels like to live within prolonged states of uncertainty and mourning.
Rather than offering closure, these paintings function as traces: fragments of a larger, unfinished record. Epitaph for the Present asks what it means to bear witness—to pain, to loss, and to the fragile persistence of the human body—at a time when coherence itself feels increasingly difficult to sustain.