This triptych was taken together with Marit Hölzer (my girlfriend), whose poem Times in singularity was interpreted in images that re-iterate iconographical elements that dominate my work: hands and cloth. Poem and triptych were based on a deep feeling of likeness between a diagnosed autistic and the person he feels is most like him (beyond diagnosis).
I used to describe an essential level of loneliness, transcending borders of individuality and health, that no one I had ever met could truly sink towards. Some visited, none stayed. The intricacies of this loneliness only became apparent over time, especially in how the ways in which depression, grief and potential trauma can differ so vastly between autistics and allistics. Many ways of coping with this loneliness developed over the years, evolving into a habit of intellectualising that what the broadest point of conflict with my peers when I was younger: emotions. Years of therapy and help from friends have softened this grasp on the rational but still, many ways of feeling were (and probably are yet) to be discovered. Meeting Marit was (and is) essential in this. The sense of being so alike that one could simply melt into one another, of almost being another’s copy, of someone meeting me on my deepest level of loneliness, was a thing implausible for as long as I can remember. But still, it came with a person under a blanket.

Side note: the image of a blanket came about years ago when I was struggling with the depression and grief of losing a loved one. Then, it was the closest I could to describe the sensation of depression: wrapping yourself in a blanket that, if you will not leave it, will suffocate you sooner or later. Ergo, the triptych also re-contextualises the cocooning blanket as something of shared togetherness rather than suffocating loneliness.