The exploration of “Presence and Absence” “Time and Evolution” emerged as essential threads while working with the medium of light. In 2003 I started using optic fibre, a light transmitting fibre mainly used for data transmission, and develop my own technic to sculpt light. In 2007 I created a family of ethereal light being: the “homos luminosos” (latin for man of light) made of constellations of light points carved in a mass of optic fibres. The “homos luminosos” stand at the threshold of time in a subtle disembodied “reality” made of pure light or information. 

The “homos luminosos” evoke both past and future ethereal presence. They suggest the presence of disembodied life, the presence of life despite the absence of physicality. “Can we imagine absence without feeling presence first?” Is there such a thing as pure presence, a presence that has always been there before all existence? Or is there a metaphysical “lack”, a fundamental emptiness since the origin, an absence of presence. In other words what came first presence or absence? Philosopher Derrida who reflected in depth on this question came up with the concept of “traces”: “marks of the absence of a presence, an always-already absent present”. 

Maybe the “homos luminosos” are made of traces? They invite us to reflect on the past and the traces of presence or absence left by humans once they abandon their physicality, as well as on the future of human kind at the dawn of the 21st century when technologies are about to shift us into a virtual disembodied trans-human experience.