The Pearl Collector
In an age when time seems to slip through our fingers, an ambitious collector decides to build a “dream house” and launch it into space: an archive of memories and visions suspended somewhere between the visible and the invisible. Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s reflections on memory as constellations of meaning, the project explores the relationship between past and present through photography, understood not merely as a record of reality, but as a tool capable of revealing hidden truths.
Working across multiple media, including photography, archival imagery, illustration, writing, and visual poetry, Alice Jankovic’s first book weaves together references to literature, art history, and mythology as tools for deciphering universal themes. These different visual and textual languages converge to create multilayered narratives in which memory, imagination, and symbolism coexist.
Each image becomes a pearl illuminating the folds of the dream, while Gaston Bachelard’s concept of the “dream house” is transformed into a symbolic container for memories and sensations. Each room, defined by intense colours, opens onto dreams, memories, and emotions, creating a profound dialogue between what was and what might yet be. This visual narrative invites the viewer to participate actively, interpreting dreams through the filter of their own history, in a fascinating exchange of meanings and reflections on time and collective memory.