Ennui

“In the state of ennui the world is emptied of its significance. Everything is seen as if filtered through a screen; what is filtered out and lost is precisely the element that gives meaning to existence.

…we can tentatively define ennui as the state of emptiness that the soul feels when it is deprived of interest in action, life, and the world (be it this world or another), a condition that is the immediate consequence of the encounter with nothingness, and has as an immediate effect a disaffection with reality.”

— From “The Demon of Noontide: Ennui in Western Literature” By Reinhard Clifford Kuhn (2017)

In March 2021 after an entire year of lockdowns, restrictions and fundamental life changes, the impact of the coronavirus worldwide crisis on people’s psyche is yet to be defined and quantified, especially as the state of uncertainty seems to be prolonging ad infinitum, despite the cautious optimism in soon regaining a sense of normality.

Certainly, many experienced the past 12 months in very different ways, but for many of us beyond any health fears, financial difficulties, practical inconveniences or loss, the profound existential feeling of purposelessness, of being stripped off the meaning of our ways, of profound existential boredom or ennui has been the underlying cause of heightened anxiety and deepening depression.

This series explores these feelings by projecting them onto the material world, also catapulted into a sense of existential meaninglessness through the absence of humans and hence the removal of purpose. All the images are shot through dirty shop or office windows or security metal bars, relevant of lockdown restrictions but also symbolising the barrier between these objects and the world that gives them purpose, a parallel to our own, visible or invisible obstacles to our existential meaning and fulfilment.