I’ve seen Cecilia making things. Mostly they stem from quite odd phenomenological references and idiosyncrasies like dust in a room, or a bollard on the sidewalk, or an airplane passing in the sky, or people walking into a train station. They are moments snapped out of reality into Cecilia’s deformed and stretched vision of what life sometimes can feel and look like. The bollard is rammed upside down back into the ground, a lost sex toy is vibrating inside a wall, collections of dust are fused into a solid mass, space between bodies is cast in cement, an ass-baring scene is secretly recorded on video.
When Cecilia and I met in art school, we learned to maintain and orbit the undefined and the disruptive, as it was a sort of lifestyle mantra to be unknowing (“I know that I know nothing”). We would go thrifting and find ourselves in ten-dollar velvet Dior Homme blazers and unwashable Miss Sixty jeans and wonder which city we wanted to be living in next. That Cecilia’s material subjects are picked from the multiplicity of urban life makes sense to me, as it seems ingrained in our time to be living purposeless with purpose in a city. According to Lorde’s 2025 single “What Was That,” the notion of the spectator as semi-surprised is still on the pulse. In a way, it is a sense of impossibility that connects art with the world: For me, Cecilia’s work embodies scenes and materialities that permit reflection with a brief laughter or tears.
– Gianna Surangkanjanajai
Photo: Mareike Tocha