The work of Croatian-born, Melbourne-based Sanja Pahoki continually hovers between melancholy and angst. Pahoki utilises photography, neon, video and text to manifest her nuanced observations of everyday life. Existential issues such as the nature of self and the role of anxiety are recurring themes, while individual works constitute elements of a larger self-portrait, documenting and archiving Pahoki’s relationship to those important to her—most particularly her family.

In Roland Barthes’ book on photography, Camera Lucida, he describes the punctum as a detail which catches the eye, some small aspect that provokes an intensely subjective response. He places this feeling in the order of loving. Barthes also describes the punctum as a wound that embodies both desire and death.

Pahoki’s exhibition of new photographic work explores what it is to find oneself wounded by the gaze of another.