POSTA, Sofia, Bulgaria
2022
Comfortably D/Numb, 2022
POSTA Gallery
Sofia, Bulgaria
‘Comfortably [D/N]umb’ is a work from a 2016 series of analogue paper collages titled Subjective Reality. At the time, it was a critique of the choice to put blinders on and be ignorant to current events in favor of hiding beneath a more comfortable veneer. Upon revisitation, it portrays a tragically literal depiction of present-day reality: A war breaks out in Ukraine during Paris fashion week. Models strut the latest fashions down a runway as bombs are being dropped a few doors down.
What about us, the audience?
Where are we?
On our phones, of course. Devouring both simultaneously.
We exist in an uncomfortable in-between state, attempting to conjure meaning in precarious times: do we run towards joy or fall into despair? At best, we are oscillating between the two haphazardly.
"But don't worry, you'll get used to it."
Perhaps, we already are.
Our brains are becoming more and more used to existing in multiple realities simultaneously. We write emails mid-verbal conversation with a person standing next to us. We scroll Instagram while watching our children grow before our very camera lens. There, we witness a filtered thirst trap, followed by live footage of carnage, and personalized ads invasively gathered from our data. This visual bombardment repeats over, and over, and over, again. Not only that, we consume it voluntarily.
Are we becoming, if not already, comfortably [d/n]umb?
There is a saying amongst old people, who, too, were young when they heard it from their elders: "a person can get used to anything."
Are we?
Are you?
The answer to the question is the beginning of the next:
What now?