Where We Once Were delves into the erasure of queer spaces in the aftermath of the AIDS crisis. It examines how numerous places where people once found intimacy and belonging were demolished in the name of safety. The series explores the lingering impact of erasure, transforming public spaces into quiet monuments of memory, loss, and resilience.

Each image reimagines a public restroom as a haunting site. Mirrors multiply and fracture the scene, while towels and jackets hang like relics. Chrome and tile glow under sterile light, and the absence of bodies becomes its own kind of presence, a reminder that desire, once hidden and condemned, still leaves traces on the surfaces that outlived it. The work straddles realism and hallucination, capturing both what was and what refuses to disappear.

The series is constructed through simple text prompts on AI image-making platforms powered by public datasets. By layering reflections, light, and repetition, each composition feels photographic yet impossible. It is a blend of documentation and dream, mirroring the act of cleaning itself: erasing and revealing simultaneously, polishing a surface until what’s missing becomes visible again.

This work raises questions about how communities remember when their spaces have been obliterated. It emphasizes survival through memory and the quiet persistence of lives once made invisible. Even in the most sanitized places, the past remains shining faintly beneath the light, refusing to be forgotten.

This work serves as a reflection on the present. As queer lives are once again targeted and erased, memory emerges as a weapon against forgetting. The past is not gone; it is waiting, gleaming beneath the surface, reminding us that presence is always political.

• Fantastic Planet