Artist Statement

“performance-based safety (who’s watching you)” is staged to appear candid at first glance. Only on closer inspection do small details reveal a more deliberate structure. The images borrow from the logic of performance yet hold the posture of documentary, creating a subtle tension between what seems spontaneous and what has been directed.

The locations move between indoors and outdoors, between the caged and the free, with a quiet sense of longing running through the series. The performance of mundane tasks offers safety for the subject, yet a desire for what lies beyond the frame lingers. A kind of liberation arrives only when the watcher is confronted directly, and the subject refuses to perform on assumed terms.

In this scenario I take on both roles: the observed and the observer. Watching myself being watched by myself creates a looping gaze that complicates the question of who is in control. Creator and creation enter a mutual dependence, influencing one another rather than exerting power in a single direction.

The series began as a playful experiment. It developed into a study of agency, vulnerability, and the subtle theater of everyday life.

-Christine Buchmann