On June 22nd, 2025, I hosted an exhibition to invite viewers into an installation I created as part of my master’s thesis — not simply to observe, but to become part of it. The installation is research-based and designed to turn the act of reading my novel, If a Tree Grows Unstable, the Safer Place to Hide Is Inside Its Hollow Trunk, into a performative experience. It uses the tangible — which our minds so hungrily seek — as a way to approach an intangible truth.

This work finds its origin in the mental frames introduced by Samuel Beckett in Waiting for Godot. Like Beckett’s work, my novel resists easy understanding. It is fragmented, blending autobiographical elements with philosophical reflection, creating a kind of quiet defiance against the hunger and greed of the Western mind — a refusal to resolve, to explain, to satisfy. What remains is a lingering hunger.

At its core, my novel explores how the Western philosophical tradition — and the mental frameworks it fosters — colours, or more precisely bleaches, our experience of life. Why do we continue to cling to these frameworks, even when they fail us, leaving us with unease, insecurity, and existential emptiness? Through both the novel and its installation space, I investigate this paradox, creating a space for reflection, encounter, and a deliberately unresolved search for meaning.