After the death of my grandmother’s deeply religious aunt Vallija, I learned that she had been not only a dentist but also a healer who had cured my mother as a child. Her spells were never found, and the knowledge she carried was never formally passed down. Yet in traditions where healing abilities are believed to travel through generations, one cannot help but wonder whether fragments of that inheritance continue to live on in my daughter and myself.
As a child, I suffered from a number of chronic illnesses and was frequently taken to healers and practitioners of alternative medicine. Some frightened me; others insisted there was something unusual about me. Whether or not I believed them, these encounters instilled an early conviction that reality is never singular, that each of us inhabits a world shaped by invisible forces, beliefs, and rituals. If, as a child, I mixed flowers and dried insects into imaginary potions, later these ritual impulses became part of my artistic practice.
Certain thoughts I repeat to myself, dreams I refuse to disclose, gestures performed in private, objects carefully kept nearby — these have become my daily spells and talismans. Ritual is inseparable from my creative process. As I work with clay, words, and images, forms emerge that feel both unfamiliar and deeply known. Somewhere in this space between intention and intuition, authorship dissolves, and I become a conduit through which something older, larger, and less tangible can take shape.
This installation brings together symbols used in folk healing practices, clay plates inscribed with protective words, hair as both a ritual material and a daily act of care. I place prayer beads alongside friendship bracelets, vessels that ward off fire next to those that soothe childhood hunger. The work reflects on the transmission of knowledge across generations, but also on something more fundamental: the possibility that ritual, healing, and magical thinking are not relics of the past, but enduring human impulses that continue to shape how we navigate the world.
