These are the laws, they said. Time goes forward, not back. Space is measured, concrete. What can be measured, must be — and all can be measured. What can be measured can be contained, what can be contained can be controlled, and what can be controlled can be dominated. But what if they were wrong?

Quantum mechanics is the scientific study of the behaviour of light and matter at the atomic and subatomic scale. It developed because deterministic classical physics fails to explain phenomena observed both at the scale of the vast universe and within the tiny atom. What was discovered — what is still being explored — is that all our certainties and perceptions are to some degree illusions. In reality, Light is both a particle and a wave. At the subatomic level, matter is indeterminate. Something exists outside of space and time.

One interpretation of these discoveries is that the single narrative of our lives is an illusion. Though we seem to experience our lives as a coherent and unified journey through space and time, the self may actually be an exponentially expanding set of instances. Each universe branches off from the next, moment to moment, in an ever-expanding web of multiple realities.

What our ancestors knew, what the unbreakable voice within us believes, is that the soul is infinite, unknowable, vast. That true reality of our existence is not only what we have done, but all that we might have been, could be, and dream. That there is more than the world that we see. That within one universe, one atom, one life, there are many worlds.

Photographic Installation with Digital Collage Prints

How Did We Get Here?, Nafasi Art Space, Dar es Salaam
Group Exhibition, April 2019