STATEMENT

In “A promising individual”, I give visual form to an experience that is both shared and deeply intimate: the feeling of having fallen behind the potential others once saw in us. The work reflects on the paralysis that can arise from an excess of possibilities, on an identity built not from authentic desire, but to respond to an external gaze.

The piece originates from the fact that, as a child, I felt “decent at everything,” capable in every field but lacking a central fire. Instead of becoming a strength, this versatility generated uncertainty and disorientation. Being everything became the safest way to be nothing.

With a more conscious gaze, I now reinterpret that broken promise not as failure, but as transformation. The silent observer I’ve become is not a renunciation, but a new identity. A point of view that digs, records, and reprocesses. The true promise, perhaps, was not success — but the ability to look deeply.

Painting thus becomes an act of reconciliation:

I promise to remember, to accept who I am today.

With “A promising individual”, I propose a vision of fragility not as a limit, but as a lens through which to observe the world. An invitation to reconsider the promise not as a duty to an idea of the self, but as a possibility of remaining faithful to one's deepest feelings.