Why Am I Sad is a question I’ve carried for as long as I can remember—both a whisper and a weight. This work doesn’t seek to answer it, but to hold space for sadness and mental health as a complex and often silenced part of human experience. At its core, the project is rooted in my relationship with my mother, who has lived with clinical depression most of her life. I grew up in its shadow—absorbing it, internalizing it—until I could recognize its presence within myself. My own struggle with depression has shaped my daily life and creative practice. This work reflects that inherited and lived emotional landscape. Photography, especially still life, is my language for translating emotion. The carefully chosen objects mirror the chaos of feeling—controlled on the surface, unraveling underneath. These arrangements are emotional portraits: of memory, grief, and stagnation. A recurring motif—the smiley face—acts as both mask and mirror. It’s a symbol of contradiction: a stand-in for joy that instead reveals discomfort. Its forced optimism reflects a world where we’re expected to perform wellness, even when suffering. This project isn’t linear or resolved—because neither is depression. It unfolds in fragments and repetition, tracing a feeling many of us try to avoid. I come from a cultural lineage where silence is often equated with strength, but this work resists that impulse. In a time when mental health dialogue is more visible yet still lacking, Why Am I Sad offers a visual space for sadness. It acknowledges what so many feel but rarely name. It’s not just my story, but a shared one—a quiet recognition of our collective emotional undercurrent, and an invitation to stop looking away and simply feel.
