Antwerp
Black cloud - Julie van der Vaart
26.11 — 24.01.2023

Black Cloud is a project about the fluidity of being and my experiences with depersonalization.

The title is borrowed from Fred Hoyle’s 1957 scifi novel The Black Cloud, which is about an intelligent extraterrestrial entity in the form of a enormous cloud of gas. This idea of a being which has no substantial or fixed form served as an inspiration to me.
 

Throughout my life I have experienced moments in which I felt my being was not contained in this body, not limited by the boundaries of my skin. 
Where is the self situated? Is it in the body, the heart, the mind? Or is it more fluid, does it stretch beyond the body, like an energetic field? 
Are we as three dimensional beings limited in our understanding of reality? And, what is reality? My work revolves around these questions.

I am in a dream. 

I become aware of it and my adrenaline rises, 
my eyes widen, my heart beats faster. 
Everything starts to disappear around me, 
but I do not wake up. 

A void grows around me 
and a void grows inside of me.
I am infinity and infinity is me. 

I reconstruct the world around me, 
but first I have to reconstruct myself. 

Look at your hands.
Nothing. Breathe. 
Look at your hands. 
Breathe. 

I am a dream.