Childhood experiences reimagined through the allegory of Peter Pan
Lost child is an ongoing illustrative project centred around a childhood that, though mostly happy, was filled with migration, new starts and a longing to never grow up.
this childhood was filled with a lot of change, which only served to fuel fantasies and the imagination. the adventures inside books and told at bedtime provided comfort and safe haven with their happy endings - stories of far-flung places, treasure maps, fairies and flying.
lost child is a work that takes place inside a book of vintage children’s stories. the book is home to an unconventional, yet autobiographical, story which folds out, hides and reveals illustrations and obscures the original contents - reimagining and reinventing them using snippets of the text and the story of peter pan.
children turn into adults and childhood becomes a place of scewed memories, origin stories and where innocence was taken for granted.
Illustration, sculptural and interactive elements are combined to create a clear picture of the story and its emotional parallels to that of peter pan. through the ongoing nature of this project there is a repetition of themes such as peter and his shadow (the self and shadow self), flying (freedom) and picking out words from the original book texts to create identifying word portraits as a way of eluding to biographical details. In this way a new story is woven out of old ones, one that encompasses a childhood experience that continues to be relevant to this day.
