Concepted and shot in quarantine during the spring and summer of 2020, Jitaku explores the idea of home as not only a place but also an emotional connection, whirring in the spaces between our atoms. Our collective search and yearning for a return to our youth through a journey back to or recreation of that place is the primary theme explored in the work. Home is both the origin as well as the destination, a Möbius strip mapping out our lives, picked up, traced, and followed through starlight and storm, threading us through the dark. Our lives, a collection of light and shadow, congregated at the rim of the morning, looking up into the fading stars spun across the sky.
"Do not weigh my eyes with pennies
- let me steal the heron's boat.
I will row upstream to the mouth of the river
to talk with the souls who gather there.
They will tell me songs of silver,
and I will sing them back to you."
- Anis Mojgani
Jitaku was on view at Stephanie Chefas Projects from November 21 - December 19, 2020. Stephanie Chefas Projects is located in Portland, Oregon at 305 SE 3rd Avenue on the second floor of the Urban Row building.
