A friendship gone sour.
Imagine that feeling of frustration and anger, and uncontrollable force within your mind and body. It’s like a dense, dark ball with sharp, menacing edges. This ball of frustration can engulf you, leaving you feeling aimless, furious, let down, a constant presence in your mind that you simply have to endure. But what if you could take that ugly, black, terrifying ball and place it in the room, as if it were just another piece of furniture? It wouldn’t disappear; it would stay there, unmoving, a fixture in your space. Now, instead of it looming over you, you have the power to confront it head-on. With this project, I faced my own frustration. Struggling to find inspiration, I felt aimless and angry until I held a mirror to myself and saw only frustration. I didn’t know how to place this feeling, so I created my own word: "aciduphilia," meaning friendship turned sour (from Latin acidus, "sharp, sour," and philia, “feeling friendly toward”). The object I created from this term is ugly, black, and razor-sharp, just like my anger. Aciduphilia embodies the transformation of our relationship with the natural world — it is a friendship gone sour. Once, we lived in dialogue with nature, but now, our extraction and dominance has led to violent pollution, deforestation, and climate change. This has turned a relationship that used to be of respect and care into a source of anxiety and conflict. Nature's frustration with us stems from our disregard for its well-being, resulting in an imbalance that affects both the environment and ourselves. By acknowledging our state of Aciduphilia and facing our own inner conflicts, we can restore the dialogue and friendship with nature again.
