Fear doesn’t live in the image

I read Freud’s The Uncanny early on. The phrase “something once familiar that has been repressed and returns” stayed with me. When I use AI to generate faces that almost look like me—or bedrooms that almost resemble mine as a child—I get that “yes, but wrong” feeling. That’s the uncanny I’m after.

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Kristeva’s theory of abjection—that what disgusts us is often what resembles us too closely—also speaks to me. We’re not afraid of “gross things.” We’re afraid of how close they are to our bodies. I think many of the “disturbing” elements in my work come from over-familiarity. The face in the projection looks like yours. But not quite. That slippage is the abject.

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Mike Kelley, in his writing on dolls, wax figures, and fragmented bodies, talks about how partial forms produce psychological unease—not to scare, but to activate repressed feelings. I learned from him that horror doesn’t have to look like a horror film. Softness + weirdness can also build a haunted space.