Cédric Zuwala: Being and Dust: Dialogue of Matter

Cédric Zuwala: Being and Dust: Dialogue of Matter by Marisa LuccheseFebruary 25, 2022

©Cédric Zuwala, from Being and Dust: Dialogue of Matter

This week in celebration of 2/22/22, we are looking at artists who work in pairs and/or diptychs.

Gestalt Theory says that when we see things next to each other, our mind automatically believes there is a relationship between the two. The images put together as a diptych create something they lacked when separate, creating something greater than the sum of their parts. Cédric Zuwala uses this form to his advantage, playing with the relationship between the inner and outer landscape. By combining images, he creates a dialogue between the temporary and the enduring. As humans, we desperately hope to leave a legacy, but in the end, as his title suggests, our beings turn to dust and return to the earth. We hope to live through our lasting impact, to leave an impression in the world like a building leaves on the ground. But if we do not leave a legacy, did we even really exist? And what really is existence? Zuwala brings these questions to the forefront of our minds.

Ultimately, our lives show many examples of matter changing from one kind to another. Whether that be the most simple form of melting ice turning to water or boiling water turning into steam, evolving forms are always present. And we understand that the ice is not gone simply because it is now a puddle; we know the water did not disappear just because we no longer see it in the pot. Yet, we continually wonder what happens to us once we die because our physical forms are no longer on Earth. Zuwala’s work makes us confront this limited view we have of our reality. Maybe we must reevaluate our existence and recognize that reality is only limited by what we think it is. Maybe we can transcend time and space; just because our physical forms are no longer here, does that have to mean we are not? And if we can accept that we can never truly know reality, and that maybe our life does not end with death, then perhaps we can be reborn within our physical lifetime and appreciate the days we have on this earth in our corporeal forms.

Cédric Zuwala is an artist photographer based in France.

He personally studied photography, philosophy and art. His artistic research focuses on time and memory… the time of memory and the memory of time. He tries to probe the residual spaces between mental geographies and physical realities. A look at the unstable erosion between emotion and reason.

Duality: The presence and its absence / The ordinary and its sublime / The ephemeral and its eternal. Existential questioning becomes the nerve center of all his work and reflections. Particular attention paid to the relationship between the individual unconscious and the collective unconscious. A hesitant encounter between the world of images and the images of the world.

Follow Cédric Zuwala on Instagram @imagementale

©Cédric Zuwala, from Being and Dust: Dialogue of Matter

Being and Dust: Dialogue of Matter

A poetic work on the material relationship between living beings and architecture.
A look at physical matter and mental substance as a fragile interstice between
the ephemeral and the eternal.
A research on the ambiguity between presence and disappearance.
An attempt to demonstrate the unconscious will of the desire to exist…
of the desire for eternity.
Accept the fragment of oneself towards the unfathomable Structure as a
philosophical symbiosis which wants its assimilation to the universe.
Memory does not seek dissolution.
Disappear with rebirth!