Ectoplasm
Variable dimensions
2025
Metal, hair, fabric, 2025
Installation and performance
Ectoplasm refers to a semi-translucent substance said to be secreted from the body during mediumistic trance or invocation rituals—a material through which spirit entities are believed to manifest in the physical world. As a witness and conduit of spiritual experience, it emerges quietly in my own connection with higher dimensions. It is both a byproduct of my entanglement with the mystical and a sweet, almost oppressive weight of spiritual embodiment—born from within me, yet enveloping me entirely.
Raised in a highly disciplined system, I developed a powerful internal mechanism of dissociation: the construction of a private, mystical world as a refuge from a reality too rigid to bear. This psychic structure, shaped by lived experience, gradually evolved into a sustained attachment to esoteric thought and contemplative practice. I inhabit a self-woven dreamscape, captivated by mystic traditions such as Gnosticism and Hermeticism—meditating daily, surrendering to transcendent states of luminous withdrawal. Yet this prolonged immersion has also spun itself into a cocoon, isolating me from the present and the world around me.
In the performance video Ectoplasm, I give form to this state. I wrap myself in a translucent organza cocoon, exposing only my head. A long braid extends from the crown, entangled in a vine-like wrought iron bedframe. An eight-pointed star covers my eyes—a symbol of the sacred vision I have long pursued. Within the cocoon, my limbs move slowly, as if sleepwalking through a sleepless night.
At the close of the performance, I gently tear free from the cocoon. I sever the braid that once tethered me. Confronting bare reality, I feel both the relief of release and the disorientation of losing my shelter.
This work is both confession and question: Are these mystical experiences that distance me from the world sacred revelations—or exquisite illusions? As Hermann Hesse wrote, “We all carry traces of our birth with us to the end—the slime and eggshell of a primeval past.” That phrase—so viscous and poetic—has become central to how I interpret my own psychic landscape. The lingering archetypes of the past cling to perception like a translucent membrane on the soul, softly pulling at my vision each time I try to see clearly.
Ectoplasm becomes the materialization of that membrane—a veil I spun myself, yet never escaped. It is a fusion of childhood, belief, dissociation, and mysticism. Our personal mythical archetypes are not abstract; they are experiential. They veil perception without fully obscuring it, infiltrate consciousness, and reshape the way we engage with the world. Even as I move into new phases of life and practice, there is always a spiritual anchor pulling me back toward an unnamed soul-form.
This is the ambiguous threshold between faith and hallucination, where individual will and the mystical world are entangled in mutual co-existence.
