On the Eyelids (An den Lidern)

2024
Eyeshadow on multi-layered transparent paper

Photo: Pia Treiber

I stimulate my closed eyelids with my fingertips and observe the resulting afterimages — fleeting, immaterial phenomena of light that trace themselves onto the inner perceptual surface of the eye. These appearances are unstable, subjective, and exist only for the moment of seeing.

To translate these visual impressions, I convert them directly into a drawn gesture on transparent paper. Fingertips colored with eyeshadow serve as my tool, carrying the inner traces of light into a material surface and leading them out of the darkness of the closed eye.

Once a sheet is filled with these traces of movement and color, I repeat the process on further layers of transparent paper. These layers are then placed one over another, creating a multilayered pictorial space. Although the result is static in its material form, the original dynamic of the movement remains preserved in the layering.

Through this physical superimposition of actions, a space emerges in which fleeting perception sediments. Drawing here is not a depiction of external objects but a displacement of inner perception into material presence — an attempt to dissolve the boundary between seeing and the seen as a stable separation.