‘Semper 4º’ explores experiences of alienation related to migration and displacement through four looping scenarios: the astronaut floating in space, the satellite’s view of earth, the deep-sea diver on the ocean’s floor and a shifting series of doors and doorways. The title of the work connects to Gottfried Semper’s book ‘The Four Elements of Architecture'.

The project began with the symbol of the doorway - representative of every passageway that an individual goes through within their lives architecturally and psychologically (doors to the subconscious or doorways as metaphors for birth and death). The two figures of the astronaut and the deep-sea diver are mirrors to one another, both individuals isolated by circumstance that exist on the fringes of what’s familiar (I also really like the dynamic of the phrase ‘as above so below’). The choice to use satellite imagery was both directly connected to the perspective of the astronaut looking down on earth and also inspired by the account @mappppamondo on Instagram, which lead me to scour and screenshot google earth as my aerial resource. The satellite’s sequence itself collages together geographically specific landscapes on a global scale: coastlines, cities, industry, agriculture and deserts.