Walkumentation: Venus Bayat Thesis Exhibition

Walkumentation Venus Bayat The artist’s practice explores themes of alienation, loneliness, and displacement to examine how these conditions shape human experience across different environments. This perspective and feeling of disconnection emerged during the artist's teenage years, and migration has intensified it through encounters with new social contexts. Positioned at the edges of belonging, the artist observes the world from a slight distance, using this standpoint to reflect on contemporary life. Through Walkumentation (an expression the artist coined to explain the process of walking and documenting simultaneously), public spaces become sites of attention and inquiry. Walking is not simply a mode of transport but a method of engagement allowing presence while maintaining space. This project employs walking-based practices and flânerie-style photography. The artist operates as a detached-yet-attentive observer, focusing on subtle gestures, spatial relationships, and quiet moments within everyday life. Rather than direct self-portraiture, the external world serves as a mirror of internal states where photographed figures become extensions of emotional experiences as outsiders in the world.