I had an epiphany when I was young: I realized that, of all the art I’d encountered that had moved or changed me, the creators of these works would never know I existed. Most of them were dead, and there was no chance I’d ever meet the ones who were alive while I was alive. The epiphany was that this experience of vast solitude that I felt as an audience was something I’d also feel as an artist—but it wasn’t an encounter with absence. It was something sorcerous and magical, a force that insisted on presence.
Johanna Hedva
https://www.art-agenda.com/features/349014/absences-and-nothingness
