The unbearable non-lightness of being 

The snail moves forward carrying its home. It carries within and upon itself what shelters, protects, and comforts it, but also what sometimes weighs it down.
In this oversized sculpture, a patinated bronze snail carries an imposing sphere wrapped in golden threads. This home takes on the appearance of a bundle, a precious yet cumbersome burden, both a refuge and a weight to bear.
The golden threads evoke the ties that bind us to our past, our memories, all that we have built and all that we have inherited. They protect as much as they restrain.

The Not-So-Unbearable Lightness of Being explores this paradox: how can we move forward freely while carrying the weight of all that makes us who we are?
For the home we carry with us is not merely a burden. It is also our memory, our inner world, our sense of belonging. And perhaps lightness does not lie in carrying nothing at all, but in the freedom to choose what we hold on to and what we let go of.
Another version of the work consists of six patinated bronze snails, each carrying a shell of a different shape, like the unique emotional baggage we all bear, shaped by our individual stories, memories, and experiences.
For five of them, this home is inseparable from their bodies, like a part of themselves they cannot shed.
The sixth, however, breaks free from this condition. Its home can be detached. Released from its burden, it can move forward faster, more freely.
It thus opens up another possibility: that of no longer being held captive by what we carry, of being able to lay down our burdens without denying who we are.

What if true lightness were simply the freedom to let go?

« …But having established the significance and particularity of exile as a concept, she moves. Look at her snails. Small creatures, rendered in clay and bronze, formed in various states depending of their history, some without shells at all, bodies soft and vulnerable, shell discarded nearby. It is a nudge to a possible future state, a symbol for home on the move… »
Amy Todman, writer