Psychopomp for the Living

2026, oil on wood, metal sphere, torch. 

Psychopomp for the Living examines forms of disassociation produced by contemporary political and technological life. Drawing on the figure of the psychopomp - a guide who escorts the dead into the afterlife - the installation imagines a paradoxical task: guiding the living, who increasingly inhabit states of social, political, and ecological estrangement.

Charged with an apocalyptic atmosphere, the work reflects a world shaped by algorithmic persuasion, authoritarian tendencies and ecological crisis. The iris hovers between surveillance and awakening; the figure between collapse and endurance.

The installation asks whether contemporary subjects have already become spectral - detached from embodied experience and mediated through screens, data, and ideological systems. Positioned at the threshold between life and death, the psychopomp offers no promise of salvation. Instead, she poses an urgent question: if the psychopomp traditionally escorts souls to the afterlife, who will guide the living back to themselves?