I’ve been writing since I was five. Before that, I read in silence. But when I finally learned to write, something clicked — not just in my mind, but in my hand.
Writing became a mirror. A place I couldn’t lie to myself. A way to decipher mood, memory, and meaning. While others learned to type, I learned to hold a fountain pen. Ink became a way of thinking. And I never stopped.
What began as personal expression became a long-form inquiry into the architecture of self through story.
Today, I create handwritten story artifacts — scrolls, fragments, letters, pages folded like secrets. These aren’t polished calligraphy pieces. They’re emotional records: shaped by mood, marked by cross-outs, made real through tremors. I use cotton and acid-free paper, fountain pens, and inks that sometimes bleed. That, too, is part of the lore.
Much of my work lives between mediums. On paper, I craft narrative relics that feel like recovered myth. Digitally, I build interactive rituals using tools like Twine — returning storytelling to its oral, participatory roots. These aren’t just digital pieces; they’re part of a lived experiment in symbolic cognition, shaped by my own absorption in narrative. Each version shifts. Each reader shapes the tale.
I pair my writing with original photography — images as portals, mood-setters, and quiet witnesses. I learned to develop film in a darkroom with my father. That early training in texture, shadow, and patience still informs every frame.
In my practice, I challenge the aesthetic of perfection and the performance of spectacle.
What emerges instead is emotional depth, symbolic messiness, and quiet mystery — a space for the fragmented, the unfinished, the sacred-in-progress.
My work functions as both ritual and research — part of an ongoing effort to map how emotion, identity, and narrative structure entangle.
Themes in my work include:
- Emotional memory and narrative identity
- The architecture of language
- The sacred in the ordinary
- Re-enchantment, witnessing, and quiet rebellion
Some artifacts are sold. Some are gifted. Others are left behind in the world as lore drops — hidden scrolls for strangers to find. A few are just for me.
I make what I needed to find:
Pages that feel like mirrors.
Messages that feel like magic.
Stories that remind us:
We are never just one thing.
And we are only ever one story away from being seen.
—
Daria Condor
Thun, 2025