A Burnt Child Loves The Fire

A trap rarely looks like a trap. More often, it takes the form of light, a flower, or an ornament — thus mimicking an invitation to come closer. It does not conceal a threat; on the contrary, it makes the threat desirable. It is precisely at this point, where beauty and suppressed trauma become mechanisms of attraction, that the project A Burnt Child Loves the Fire unfolds. The exhibition is built around aesthetic traps: light emanates from within a torture device, glass flowers turn out to be poisonous, flames transform into a dance, and fragile glass reveals its capacity to wound. Here, danger is not opposed to beauty; rather, it manifests itself through it. This dichotomy recalls the ancient Greek concept of pharmakon — a word that simultaneously denotes both poison and cure. It does not imply a choice between one and the other; instead, both meanings coexist, remaining in a state of unstable equilibrium. Like the pharmakon, the objects in the exhibition resist unambiguous interpretation, existing between healing and destruction, fragility and violence. In this way, the different media become an exploration of the moment when alluring beauty proves more compelling than destructive experience.