A Way of Recording Inner Life

A group exhibition bringing together seven artists working across photography, painting and moving image, exploring how our inner worlds, feelings and experiences might be captured. About A Way of Recording Inner Life Group Exhibition | 16–23 October 2026 Avivson Gallery, 49 Highgate High Street, London N6 5JX Curatorial Statement We live in the same world, yet each of us sees and experiences it in our own way. It seems such an obvious truth, and yet how rarely do we stop to consider the sheer depth and vastness of another person’s inner world. Everyone we meet carries a whole life within them, of which we catch only glimpses. We can never truly know what someone else is thinking, or how they really feel. We may not even fully understand ourselves. So how can we ever hope to understand another person completely? In Totality and Infinity (1961), the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas explored the idea that a person will always be more than our understanding of them. No matter how well we know someone, there will always be more to who they are than the image we hold of them in our minds. And yet we have all experienced those moments when a conversation becomes so personal, so full of emotion, that we feel an extraordinary closeness to another person. For a brief moment, it seems we understand not only what they are saying, but what they are feeling. And sometimes, we might truly come that close. But how is such understanding possible when we have never lived their life? This is the very question that the German philosopher Edith Stein explored in On the Problem of Empathy (1917). She sought to understand how we can recognise and make sense of another person’s feelings without having experienced them ourselves. Even in our deepest moments of empathy, we remain two separate individuals. What I find particularly compelling is her suggestion that, in trying to understand others, we may also discover something about ourselves. We look into the eyes of someone in a photograph, and for a moment, it feels as though an entire world lies behind their gaze. But whose world are we really seeing? Theirs, the photographer’s, or our own? Or all three at once. A Way of Recording Inner Life brings together seven artists working across photography, painting, and moving image, each exploring, in their own way, how something as deeply personal as our inner world might be captured. Through their work, they seek to give form to feelings, memories and experiences that we cannot always put into words. Yet what an artist puts into a work and what a viewer finds within it may be two very different things. Perhaps art cannot help us understand another person completely. But it may allow us to see just how differently each of us feels and experiences what it means to be alive. Featured Works — Maria Saukhina Maria Saukhina is a London-based interdisciplinary artist working across performance, moving image, photography, painting and installation. Her contribution to the exhibition includes two works from Becoming Image (2026), an interdisciplinary project exploring the relationship between the body, material and image. Held / Holding (2026) Acrylic and fabric on canvas, 60 × 100 cm. The work explores the fragile relationship between support and constraint, where fabric becomes both a source of tension and something to hold on to. Becoming Image (2026) Single-channel video, 2 min 55 sec. Developed through an experimental aerial performance, the video explores the relationship between control and surrender, as the body moves through states of tension, resistance and loss of control. Together, the works investigate how physical experience can be transformed into visual and material forms. Artist website: https://mariasaukhina.art Exhibition details and registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-way-of-recording-inner-life-tickets-2003461519336 Read more Toggle Painting Installation Photography Multi-disciplinary Film / Video