Olivia Zappone
Being jarred from the adapted pace of our lives and into the stillness of lockdown opens a gateway to introspection. The ways we once lived can reveal themselves to feel quite unfamiliar, at least I’ve felt this misrecognition echo through my heart and heard of similar sensations in those I hold close. Why have we felt the need to move so fast? Who are we when the world, to many, appears in such chaos, and to many others, feels as if it has stopped? Where do we place our identity, our “knowingness” of ourselves and of the world as it is, if in a single sunrise the world we once knew has changed drastically?
In one swift and earth-chilling wind, we have been guided to a point of meeting ourselves in a new world. For myself, this feels as if I’ve been carried to a chasm of questioning, bringing to the surface that which my heart most deeply yearns for. I meet, again, my most primal self when so many ties of identity are stripped away by a world simultaneously in chaos and on pause. This self tends to visit in the most tender and the most trying of times. She reminds me to ask if what we have come to value as a collective, what we have come to build a life on top of, is perhaps an unstable foundation for the self as much as the whole.
“Where do you feel called home to?” A question she seems to pose each time she visits, not in words but in a kind of knowing that settles in my bones. It is in her presence that I am reminded of the immeasurable love between myself and the skin of miraculously familiar bodies, of the natural world, of all things living. She casts a light on my very source of Life, reminding me why we are here and whispering guidance to stay close to this, above all else. There is a loving power in slowness.
This series of images is of my partner, created during a current travel quarantine after being apart for the summer. A makeshift backdrop is duct-taped to the wall of our tiny studio apartment, while the kitchen table now so conveniently blocks the bathroom door and a beautiful mess sprawls exuberantly into the living space.
Olivia Zappone is a visual artist and writer, creating as a visitor on unceded WS̱ ÁNEĆ, Lekwungen, Acjachemen, and Tongva territory. She currently studies at the University of Victoria, developing her practices in painting, video art, and photography. With her foundations in fashion and editorial photography, Olivia now focuses on the medium as a language of identity, anatomy, balance, and visual pleasure. Her poetry indulges in sensations of interconnection, emotion and evolution weaved within the individual and collective human experience.
