Alessia Gunawan, Ride or Die

Ride or Die

Alessia Gunawan

Publisher
Art Paper Editions
Year
2026
ISBN
978-94-93511-17-0
Specifications
Paperback
30.5 × 20 cm
112 pages
Colour illustrations
English
Edited and designed by Jurgen Maelfeyt

Ride or Die begins from a specific moment, place, and relationship. It wasn't built around a fixed narrative, but as a way of moving through a landscape and trying to read it. At some point it became clear that presence alone wasn't enough. The space only opened through roleplay, through gestures, costumes, and characters used almost as tools. Though we are not American, our visual language has been shaped by the global dominance of American cultural production: the road, the desert, the outlaw couple, the motel, the idea of escape. These are not neutral images but codes circulating through media and feeding back into culture. In this series of images, these codes are activated rather than illustrated. They shift how we move, behave, and see. A simple element like a mask or a posture can alter the scene, redirecting both the image and the bodies within it. The project is less about storytelling than about how these codes act on us. It looks at how they structure perception, intimacy, and action, and how, through staging and repetition, they can be disrupted. The work unfolds as a loop: the landscape is first used as a stage, then begins to mirror what is projected onto it, gradually taking on the role of a character itself. Road signs, fragments, and passing messages start to read as signals contributing to a gradual mystification of the space.

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