n. sonder
(as coined by John Koenig, 2012.)
The realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and as complex as your own.
Within ‘The Land of Sonder’ Marisa explores the concept of the fleeting figures that you will never encounter. The millions of individual lives, each with their own intricate interiority, with narratives that are so familiar yet so vastly different. Their details never revealed and your lives never to intersect.
But, like you, they dance, they work, and they cry.
They love and they are loved.
They are tender, they are angry, they are anxious, they are bold.
And sometimes they are so close to you, you feel the air move.
Still, we will never know them.
Comfort and empathy are found when there is an understanding that the stranger beside you shares this experience of complexity. These invisible stories of others, connect us in silence when we resolve to reside together in ‘The Land of Sonder’.
Image: Ava, 110 x 100cm | Embroidered photography on canvas.
