“An artist´s life.” The stories of the people behind the art #24 Eva Portis

“An artist’s life.”
The stories of the people behind the art.
An honest peek within the 1000 layers of Naaz.
Naaz Mohammad
Eva Portis

Eva Portis:

“As a music artist myself, who has found a new and profound love for photography, the dimensions within creation are constantly shifting and the view of what is being created as well. Where a picture can capture a moment in time, the words and melodies of a song are just as much a time capsule – they’re both a quiet storm, but one will settle down at sea and the other moves over land with nowhere to go and has the potential of becoming a hurricane. Now that I’m constantly shifting between those dimensions, I recognize these storms within my artist friends too. It’s what shapes our relationship, because we’re both in on this unspoken secret that we can talk about for hours, without actually talking about it. For C-Heads’ ‘’An Artist’s Life’’ I wanted to portray the constant and forced dynamic between the artist and their personal life and how this shows up within.

“The dimensions within creation are constantly shifting and the view of what is being created as well.”

My best friend Naaz immediately came to mind, as we’re both grown up women on the spectrum, who have found a home in each other’s quirks. We’re both curious about the world, the people in it and what drives them. We share the same smile and tears, whilst never giving up on our childlike playfulness. When we talk, words aren’t needed for understanding each other. And embracing doesn’t just happen in each other’s arms, but also in our deeply rooted love for one another – the kind that isn’t envious, judgmental or with expectations. When I look at Naaz, I see a world class super star and all her beautiful layers shaping her into this powerful woman who wears her complexity as her beauty. Walking around in her flip flops, while eating a home-made Kurdish dish out of tupperware – she is all of the above combined and these photo’s are my celebration of her.”

A note from Naaz:

‘’Being an artist pushes me into melancholia.’’

“Everything I make and the intention behind it is a form of self expression, but also finding likeminded people. Especially being neurodivergent and also being a neurodivergent person of color, it’s difficult finding relatability within other artists, unless they’ve spoken out about their struggles with balancing between their personal life and their artist life. Largely, if the art is about what they’re going through. In my case, there’s so much melancholy in what I write and create, that it becomes very hard for me not to take over that thinking pattern that I have in my art and apply it to my real life. Because it is just as much my real life. Therefore, I am in need of escapisms such as watching films, reading and looking at my animals, to remind myself that what I create and the mindset that I have when I do that is not all there is to life… And that’s how I find my balance.”