Oh, I wish I could hug you now by Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

What if the bond between two people could be traced as a tactile timeline, making it's data story accessible to others and allowing them to explore it with their own hands?

My friendship with C. started on a video chat and remained in the virtual space for over a year. Our connection was fostered by conversations that stretched for hours, sometimes through the entire night—filled with laughter, tears, and words of mutual understanding, rooted in a common background and upbringing.

The work is framed by a ceramic vessel, mirroring the Pho we shared as our first meal together and the comfort we found in each other despite the physical distance. It holds a continuous woven cotton band, where the length of each section corresponds to the duration of a phone call, with every warp signifying one minute. The interspersed ceramic beads mark the full weeks and days that passed between our conversations. Each texture embodies a unit of time: the minutes spent talking, laughing and bonding are rendered in soft cotton thread, while the time spent apart is captured by firm ceramic material - obstacles to overcome when tracing the band with one’s hands. One woven hour stretches visually longer than a week, intentionally distorting the time scale to emphasize how shared moments mattered more to our friendship than the intervals apart. The day we finally shared a long-awaited hug, our connection moved beyond the digital, beginning a new chapter that is reflected in the open-ended weaving, holding space for the story to continue.

By transforming memories into a physical form, the piece invites viewers to trace the story of our friendship with their own hands and explore the underlying data in a way that transcends sight, as something textured and real.