SONDER
JESSICA MCNAIR

Sonder refers to the realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. 

My Body of Work is heavily influenced by this definition and is focused on the complex connection between the differing perspectives of individuals experiencing life. 

I’ve chosen to explore this concept in a way that reflects my own understanding of the human experience with a number of images from my life.

As an identical twin, I often feel disconnected from any sense of individuality with much of my life being a replicate of my sister’s life.

Sonder is a work created to explore the parallels of the human experience and remind the audience that every individual views the world subjectively. Even a small inconsistency within my own world can drastically alter my perspective of life in comparison to my sister’s perspective—regardless of our biological similarities.

 

I chose lino-cut printing as well as collagraph and intaglio printing to use in my work, as I feel the simplicity of these mediums allow the audience to focus on the faces in the artworks, recognising them as simple-featured strangers who are going about life at a moment in time. This way, the audience has no context of the moment and may recognise the individual as a random person sitting next to them on a train. 

This type of improvised capturing of a moment was a result of the influence of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography as well as Andrea Castro’s series, Strangers.