Déjà vu

The first Déjà vu I remember was back when I was 6 or 7. I was in India, and I was playing with my friends. I walked into their kitchen, and had this sense of already reliving that memory, this memory is still clear in my mind, which is why I have a fascination on phenomenon’s like this. Déjà vu means, already seen. Its that weird feeling where a certain instant in time is relived, or felt as if its relived, and sometime it feels like seeing the future. There are many theories as to why this happens; one is the possibility that the information traveling from one eye is delayed, causing you to “relive” a memory. Another possibility is that your mind might be going through a memory “loop” of some sort.

I kept thinking of instances as a starting point to my illustration. I wanted to juxtapose the same figure but in the instance of turning. I wanted the background to be seamless, but repeating. Essentially I have a figure in the instance of turning. The landscape is repeating. The girl’s face is split, with the left side staring at the viewers, while the right side turns to see what’s already been seen. The process for this illustration was a bit intensive; I was experimenting with film camera around this time, and wanted to play with the idea of having film negatives overlap. I don’t particularly enjoy accidents in film, but from an experimental point of view it offers some interesting aesthetics. Overlapping images or double exposures inspired me to juxtapose the same figure in different poses next to each other. The final was much more subtle than the original idea. There is no reference to film cameras or negatives, but instead in involves the background image being repeated as a function for showing the same image again, and having two poses juxtaposed next to each other to represent an instant in time where the figure moves.