In Four States of the Surreal, four screens create a visual dialogue that moves through different states of consciousness—Dreaming, Waking, Hallucination, and Reflection. Surrealist thought has long embraced the instability of perception, the fluidity of reality, and the deep ties between the unconscious and the everyday. Each of these films invites viewers into a shifting mental terrain, where logic bends, time is a loop, and meaning is malleable.

Light serves as the central guide through this surreal journey—not just as illumination, but as revelation and transformation. Echoing Surrealism’s fascination with hidden realities and cyclical time, shifting colours distort perception, dissolve linearity, and open portals between the conscious and subconscious. Shadows obscure as much as they reveal, unsettling the familiar and turning each season, as represented in the installation, into a recurring dreamscape rather than a fixed progression.

Screen 1: Dreaming
Ordinary Life by Yoriko Mizushiri, 2025, 10'

Dreaming dissolves boundaries between sensation and memory. Ordinary Life (2025), a hand-drawn animation by Japanese animator Yoriko Mizushiri, evokes the delicate, subconscious drift of dreams—its soft, fluid lines and pastel-toned images morph in and out of coherence, forming a world both familiar and strange. 

Screen 2: Waking
La Chute by Boris Labbé, 2018, 14'

Waking gives form to the formless, but not without struggle. In La Chute (2018), French animator Boris Labbé crafts a hypnotic, apocalyptic vision of descent and transformation. Hand-drawn celestial beings fall from the heavens, disrupting the cosmic order and giving birth to both heaven and hell. The film’s intricate, Bosch-like imagery and repetitive, haunting score suggest that even in wakefulness, reality remains precarious—its structure on the verge of collapse.

Screen 3: Hallucination
Mulika by Maisha Maene, 2021, 14'

Hallucination reveals the hidden layers beneath the surface. In Mulika (2021), Congolese film-maker Maisha Maene complicates the narrative around mining and exploitation in Goma through the point of view of an afronaut who wanders the streets of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The film blurs perception and revelation, embodying the heat and intensity of an altered state of awareness.

Screen 4: Reflection
Future Flowers by Hao Zhou, 2022, 10'

Reflection lingers between past and future, opening spaces for transformation. Future Flowers (2022) by Chinese film-maker Hao Zhou presents a part dystopic, part poetic meditation on identity, time, and belonging. Drifting between surreal imagery and quiet observation, the film invites viewers into an introspective state where memory and vision collapse into one.