Sasol New Signatures

Selfbound is an interactive sculptural artwork consisting of three stacks of handmade paper, each bound shut, totalling over 11,000 sheets. The pages cannot be turned; therefore, the book is unreadable.

Each sheet is a material rebirth. The pulp was made from my own disintegrated undergraduate artworks, combined with natural fibres like kōzō for its tensile resilience, banana for softness and the particular joy of personal memory, pine, abacá, and others. Images, marks, and histories are buried inside the sheets themselves, held without being disclosed.

The three stacks represent distinct weights: my individual self, my religious upbringing, and my queer identity. Separately, each has its own form and dimension. Together, their embodiment reveals that grief and vulnerability are not contained within any single identity but emerge precisely from their coexistence.

The artist book is a structure that promises revelation — pages exist to be opened, read, and accessed. Selfbound refuses this. By continuously binding the book, I subvert the religious expectation of confession and the therapeutic expectation of resolution. Grief is not unwound here. It is given weight, dimension, and a place to exist.

Selfbound does not offer access. It offers presence.