RENEE STAMATOVA: ONLY WHEN YOU’RE LEAVING

 

From PHOTODUST:

Sometimes, as adults, we fail to grow out of childish habits. The stories we share are laden with false exaggeration and hypocrisy. Yet sometimes, despite the seemingly unbelievable content, our stories are real.

We confide in each other our deepest secrets, our darkest desires, our truths and our faults to try to make sense – to better understand each other and ourselves – and to accept that which presents itself to us.

The consuming nature of love is still persistent even when the love has gone.
It shows itself in tired eyes and a heavy heart.
It fills the mind with an emptiness that seems beyond unbearably full.
It stays with us even after time should have healed its lingering presence.

Love behaves like a bitter lesson, though one seldom learnt. And so we find ourselves stepping in the same potholes along the same path, strangely never readjusting our emotional compass to detour that which we’ve already traversed.

This body of work has evolved from three parts, bearing the titles of songs about love gone wrong: “Old Flames Are Like Dead Matches”, “Game For Fools” and “A Change Is Gonna Come”. Literally, this series is a labour of love; it concerns itself with dying love and its impossible weight.

I make this work so that you can get lost in it, or perhaps even find yourself in it, and of course, I make this work for me.

As women we share stories to liberate ourselves from them and the circumstances around them; a way of connecting our past to our present to furnish the transformation of our future.

These conversations prove delicate and fierce, graceful and raw. They are confessional therapies cradling powerful voices.

Shattered hearts and spilled tears over conversations and text messages,
Loaded memories of time spent treading voices of estranged lovers-
Composing the demise of love, through the sensitivity of photography.

LISTENING TO

Benny Tones, Nevermind Feat. Mara Tk
Electric Wire Hustle, Gimme That Kinda
Erykah Badu, In Love With You Feat. Stephen Marley
Fat Freddy’s Drop, Lose Myself In You
Fertile Ground, Naked
Flying Lotus, Tea Leaf Dancers Feat. Andreya Triana
Jamie Lidell, Game For Fools
Hooves & JPS, Nevermind Remix
Oakley Grenell, Moving On
Pharoahe Monch, So Good
Tweet, Iceberg
The Big Payback, Cosmic Travelling
Waajeed, Busta Feat. J Dilla
The Nextmen, Let it Roll Feat. Alice Russell

And too many more to mention…

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Photodust

Author: Photodust

PHOTODUST is an independent art and photography organisation based in Melbourne, Australia. We are a not-for-profit Asia-Pacific curation project. Our aim is to engage and encourage collaboration between artists, for the production and publication of photographic and lens-based art. PHOTODUST aims to establish a unique perspective toward visual culture. For this purpose, we are constantly searching for artworks that involve the use of photography and related processes.The rules are simple: all photographic and lens-based works will be considered. Our only requirement is that the work should be produced by artists born or based in the Asia-Pacific region.www.photodust.org (copyright details available here: https://wordpress-711166-2356953.cloudwaysapps.com/about/photodust/)