HEALING OUT LOUD began with something I couldn't keep carrying like the grief and the stigma I experience and sometimes makes home within myself. I've lived my life until early 30’s as an undiagnosed neurodivergent person and this project is the ongoing and very confronting process of unmasking. 

These series are my way of saying things when there are no words for them. As a culturally diverse person, I sometimes feel stuck, even linguistically, in how I speak, as I am caught between two lives - the one where I could speak Romanian fluently and confidently enough to express all of myself, and English. I am not fully at home in either world: I can't say what I feel in Romanian anymore, but I am not yet fully expressed in the language of the country I live in. If anything, you can feel the duality of this project coming from different angles - from black to white, contrast to shadow, ups and downs, one language to another, the mirrors, the bipolarity of art versus therapy.

Stigma thrives between closed doors, closed minds and closed mouths. The moment we start to speak, we open the door to understanding, and then acceptance can follow. But we must move beyond acceptance into inclusion, respect and making space at the table for every story, even the uncomfortable ones.

I work mostly in digital photography, though film was my first love, since I was 7 years old, and I've since dipped my toes into multimedia and printmaking. Playing with double exposure and the intensity of black and white is what sparks my creativity.