The Moment of Youth

I spent nearly four hours in the Roseto Comunale on the Aventine Hill that morning. The garden was quiet, the air thick with mist, as I moved through it slowly. I wanted to take my time there, embracing the calmness, the way one should when you know it's a moment you'll never get back. In the garden there were many buds in different transformative moments, but this rose stopped me in my tracks — it appeared to me fully open, at the precise peak of itself. Its deep red petals peering back at me, carrying the full weight of feminine vitality, bodily cycles, the visceral energy of something alive at its most alive — it seemed to hold a truth about the world that we all know too well.

The Moment of Youth is my attempt to catch that fleeting moment, and respond to its fragility by freezing it in time. This piece asks what do we hold on a pedestal, is it beauty or its illusion, and if we're able to stop time and let it last forever, does it still hold the same power? Or is it because it's fleeting that we cherish it so?

The ornate antique wooden frame with its oval opening insists on the preciousness of what's inside, and the custom black steel stand — fabricated here in Brooklyn — elevates the rose somewhere between object and offering, demanding the kind of attention we rarely give to things we know won't last.

This piece is part of Bright Ruin (2025), my series of over 45 unique works shot entirely on analog film over the course of 10 days in Rome, and first exhibited at Gallery ATARAH in September 2025.