Ghost in the machine
Digital drawing and photography
Edition 1 of 5
90 cm x 60 cm
Artist’s Statement
Ghost in the Machine is a deeply personal reflection on grief and depression, especially as they unfold away from the comfort of a safe, “home-like” space. This work weaves together fragments of memory and loss, beginning with a landscape taken from a friend’s home in Bloemfontein—a borrowed sense of refuge. Over this, I layer images of myself from my Contraceptivos performative series, in which I wear a black wedding dress reminiscent of Victorian mourning attire, alongside a GPS map that leads to the burial site of my mother and grandmother. This binds body, place, and memory into a single visual gesture.
The title references the philosophical notion of the “ghost in the machine,” a term describing the soul or consciousness as a non-physical entity inhabiting a mechanical body. In this context, it speaks to the feeling of being haunted by absence—by those who have passed and by versions of the self that have been shed along the way. It suggests that the soul does not always rest within the body, but instead drifts through landscapes, through memory, through digital traces—seeking connection, healing, or even escape.
This work becomes a meditation on displacement, mourning, and the strange, liminal spaces we inhabit when grief follows us into familiar or unfamiliar places. It is both a search for home and a quiet act of carrying the dead with us wherever we go.
Gallery
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