Where Did The State Touch you?
2020-Where Did the State Touch You? is a conceptual photography and research project about how the state becomes physical. We often speak about “the state” as something abstract, but many people meet it through their bodies: in interviews, searches, waiting rooms, checkpoints, forms, queues, offices, and the small instructions that organise how you sit, stand, move, speak and wait.
The project asks a simple question: where, exactly, did the state touch you? Sometimes the touch is literal. More often it is procedural. A chair you cannot leave. A door that locks. A camera that watches. A question that forces a certain kind of answer. Over time these encounters leave traces: posture, habit, vigilance, shame, relief, resentment, numbness.