Saturday Morning at the Beach
I was born in 1974 to the best parents I know. I mean that sincerely - I’ve yet to encounter a more loving couple, two people who were and still are completely dedicated to their family. My mom was a beautiful 21-year-old musician and singer, and my father, a physicist turned computer scientist, was nearly ten years her senior at 30 when they welcomed me into the world.
We lived in a modest apartment on a quiet street in a small town of around 15,000 people. Our building was constructed in the typical 1970s style of the era and region - essentially a plain, three-story concrete box with three apartments on each floor. To me, that building was a palace. Growing up, it never once occurred to me that it was basic; to me it was home, and it was exactly where I belonged. Of the twelve families living there, about half became like extended family to us. Sharing children of similar ages, we intertwined our holidays, endless afternoons, summers, books, and even daily meals. It was a haven - my own little heaven.
This past December, I visited my parents for two weeks in my hometown, which has now grown into a thriving city of over 80,000 people. I spent hours flipping through old photo albums, recalling that building where I spent my first happy decade. During the visit, I impulsively decided to knock on the door of the apartment where I was raised. The building has since been thoroughly renovated and looks quite lovely today, yet it remains completely recognizable. I went in hoping the interior might still hold echoes of the past.
Luckily, the wonderful family who owns it now warmly invited me inside and showed me around. I found tears rolling down my cheeks uncontrollably as I superimposed my memories onto the new fixtures and layout. Much had changed, yet fundamentally, the essence remained. It was still a haven, and it was still home to me.
The spark of my new series "Retro-Causation"
This visit became the catalyst for my new art series, Retro-Causation. Retrocausality is the concept that the future can influence the past - essentially, that an effect can precede its cause. While our everyday macroscopic world appears to operate on a strict timeline where cause always comes before effect, fundamental physics treats time quite differently. While retrocausality is a legitimate, mathematically sound perspective in quantum foundations, mainstream science draws a hard line when it leaves the subatomic world.
Retrocausality reimagines the universe not as a strict, forward-rolling timeline, but as a dynamic web where the future actively participates in shaping the past. This perspective relies on four main scientific pillars:
Fundamental Time-Symmetry: The mathematical symmetry inherent in foundational physics equations.
Quantum Entanglement: The elegant resolution of particle correlations without violating the speed of light.
Serious Theoretical Frameworks: Models like Yakir Aharonov's Two-State Vector Formalism, which describes physical states as a blend of past and future vectors.
Empirical Demonstrations: Practical explorations via Wheeler's Delayed-Choice Experiment.
Together, these principles suggest that at a subatomic level, an observer's present measurement can retroactively determine a particle’s historical path, reframing the past as a fluid landscape of probabilities rather than a rigid, unchangeable record.
Resource: Exploring Wheeler's Delayed-Choice Experiment: This video provides an intuitive visual breakdown of how changing a measurement apparatus at the last possible split-second fundamentally alters a photon's past behavior.
As an artist, I am not bound by the strict boundaries of current scientific consensus. I am free to explore and imagine my own world as a present state constantly being rewritten and transformed - determined by two vectors simultaneously: one moving forward from the past, and one propagating backward from the future. Through this series, I am sending and receiving messages to and from my younger self, re-remembering the story of this lifetime to better understand my present.
Translating Memory into Art
My parents in 1974
In this piece of this series, titled Saturday Morning at the Beach, I used an old photograph of my parents taken in 1974. How do I know it was a Saturday morning? Well, I am being lovingly held by my father and appear to be about six months old, and our family regularly went to the beach on summer Saturdays.
Our weekend routine was distinct: waking up to the sweet smell of lightly burned sugar and butter. My dad would let my mom sleep in while he fried Petit Beurre (rectangular shortbread cookies) in butter for my brother and me. In the background, the radio would play my favorite show, "Happy Choir," while downstairs, the sound of children playing and neighbors hand-washing their cars drifted through the windows. Later at the beach, we would share fresh fruit and keep the radio playing.
Saturdays were also anchored by family visits; every week, we visited either my maternal or paternal grandparents. At my grandfather Jaque’s home, a sweet surprise always awaited me: my favorite chocolate bar. Truth be known, I wasn't actually all that interested in the chocolate itself. It’s hard to believe now, but I was a skinny child with very little interest in food, often needing iron shots at the doctor's because I refused to eat meat.
My love for those bars lay instead within the folds of the packaging, where I could spot the CMYK printer registration marks. Those four colored dots and cross-hair marks were what resonated with me most. In those days, alongside my tomboyish existence, I also possessed deeply feminine comforts: I collected tiny figurines housed in a house-shaped curio shelf, loved having my mother style my hair, and adored dressing up.
In this artwork, you will find my proud young parents painted onto an acrylic mirror to literally reflect the present viewer. The building where I grew up rises as I best recall it from those days (using Google Street View to lactate a similar looking building on a nearby street that has not yet been renovated and an online photo editor), accompanied by two little sparrows nesting in the memory. On the side, I have recreated two of my favorite childhood porcelain dolls alongside those beloved CMYK registration dots.
Artwork Specifications
Title: Saturday Morning at the Beach
Completed: April 4, 2026
Dimensions: 16 × 16 inches
Foundation: Wood panel, acrylic mirror, foam-core
Mediums: Acrylic paint, pen, and paper
Sculptural Elements: Paper clay
Finishing Touches: Gold leaf
This piece takes me back entirely. I can almost taste the salty beach air and feel the sea breeze brush against my cheeks. It captures a perfect Saturday morning at the beach, and serves as a deep expression of gratitude to my parents, who gave me an amazing childhood and a truly beautiful life.
