Alchemy of Becoming

This multimedia collage series explores the many stages, contradictions, and mysteries of transformation. Using imagery drawn from diverse symbolic sources — butterflies, candles, the Woman of Willendorf, vintage book pages, spiritual iconography, passport fragments, QR codes, teeth, Mother Mary, bubble wrap, and mirrors — each collage becomes a layered narrative of change, shedding, emergence, and rebirth.

The materials and symbols interact like pieces of a personal and collective mythology. Butterflies evoke metamorphosis; candles suggest illumination and impermanence; the Woman of Willendorf grounds the viewer in ancient lineage and embodiment; passports and QR codes reference identity, movement, and the shifting borders of the self. Teeth hint at vulnerability and survival, while mirrors and reflective surfaces invite self-recognition and the ongoing reconstruction of one’s inner world.

Bright colors and gold accents thread through the series, representing alchemy — the subtle, sacred, and sometimes chaotic process of turning experience into insight, pain into growth, and uncertainty into possibility. The collages merge the spiritual with the mundane, the ancient with the contemporary, forming a vibrant tapestry of symbols that map the continual evolution of identity.

Together, these works ask viewers to consider how transformation is never a single moment but an ongoing practice of becoming, informed by memory, culture, belief, and the luminous forces that shape us from within and beyond.