Receipts of Existence
For years I have been keeping my shopping receipts. I didn’t begin with a clear purpose, I simply found it hard to throw them away. At first, I thought it was a professional obsession. Later I understood it was something else, I wanted to collect time.
Each receipt is proof of contact with the world. A date, a time, an amount, a product. A record of a need fulfilled. A certificate of existence. Consumption is one of the few spaces where presence is validated, I was there. I bought. I existed. The receipt reminds me of it.
An involuntary diary: bread, sunscreen, a ticket, nails, milk, a plant, toilet paper, wine. The intimate story of a life made of things. Sometimes I try to reconstruct each purchase. What was I thinking that day? Who was I with? Why did I choose that? Other times I pause at the precise instant of printing: the machine spitting out paper, inscribing that I was there and that, for a few seconds, I was part of something. A minimal story, the market and me.
This project is perhaps a confession, that in order to exist, one must buy. And I existed many times.
25 red boxes with receipts, material archive.
Live drawing performance, from what is consumed to what is remembered.
