On Opposition & Relation
The following poem and image composition from 2026 emerged from a question that stayed with me for quite some time: how do opposites relate to one another? I had long wanted to write about lapis lazuli but could not find an entry point. That changed when I encountered a photograph of a person resting on green grass, framed by dark, wavy hair. The image initiated a week-long creative process in which colours, textures, and contrasts gradually became a language of their own. Drawing inspiration from the metaphorical mode of expression used by the Tamarians in Star Trek, I explored darkness and light, sea and shore, depth and surface, difference and relation. In the end, the original photograph and the image of the borage flower came to represent not opposition as separation, but opposition as a relationship through which each element reveals and deepens the other.
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In that sense being seen need not mean being judged. Sometimes it can mean being the relational occasion for something that neither the observer nor the observed could have produced alone. This makes me wonder whether waves without moonlight even exist?
Lapis by the Sea
Lazuli at Rest
Sometimes, when least expected,
the waves of the ocean grow dark,
edged with silver —
like a midnight tide under moonlight.
Sometimes the sea’s deep lapis lazuli
drapes like velvet over hidden depths,
serene and still —
as a mountain rests quietly at the shore.
Sometimes chiaroscuro finds the sea,
not to vanish but to deepen —
a single gleam upon the lapis dark,
revealing depths unseen before.
