Diana Tepes

When asked about the media I work in, I casually list drawing, painting, photography and their different encounters in mixed media. Though they all stem from the same concern for identity, the first two are characterized by a specific chromatic palette, while my work in photography and experimental video feed a deeper intimacy through the absence of colour. Nonetheless, it strikes me that I tend to refer to my drawings as illustrations. Naturally, trying to understand why that is, I came to realize that I am indeed illustrating something – that is, my own thought processes. Thinking about thinking seems to be my main food group.

My thoughts are mostly images, but those that I allow to come into the world are the result of a temporary dissociation that I observe from afar. Because thinking comes in layers, these illustrations are similarly inhabited by layers, twists, reiterations that point out a certain rigidity. It sometimes feels like I am drawing the limits of my own person, just like drawing the outside contours of an object on paper. I have always had a sort of dual observation that coagulates both the gaze of a curious, clueless child and the remote, cold analysis associated with adults. I hardly ever draw or photograph people, but I frequently draw barely-humans and a recurrent character that is certainly not a human, but a self. Thus, I imagine that the viewer is the missing piece in my works. Ideally, one would enter my images and hang out there, allowing them to dislocate him as much as he is invited to dislocate them. After all, if the viewer ends up thinking about my thinking, I am content. He would then be just another self that can impose his methodologies of observation onto my thoughts as much as I do. I am as friendly as my drawings.