The exhibition Until I Touch takes its starting point from the biblical story of Saint Thomas, who was only able to accept Christ’s resurrection after convincing himself through his own senses, most importantly through the experience of touch. In the context of the exhibition, however, the story of Doubting Thomas is not approached as a religious narrative, but as a metaphor for the relationship between faith and doubt, certainty and uncertainty, perception and reality. The story raises a fundamental question of perception and cognition: how does something become certain to us, and what role do the body and direct experience play in this process?
Read through the lens of phenomenology, Thomas’ story can be understood as a situation in which the insufficiency of sight leads to the necessity of touch. The body, in this sense, is not merely a passive instrument through which reality is received, but the medium through which an active relationship with reality is established. Yet touch does not necessarily mark the endpoint of uncertainty. It simultaneously implies proximity, exposure, and the crossing of boundaries, encompassing both intimacy and brutality.
The figure of Thomas, and the act of doubt itself, thus point to an in-between state in which the boundaries between desire and compulsion, the search for certainty and the need to prove it, approaching and resisting become blurred. Until I Touch keeps this uncertain space open—between faith and doubt, closeness and distance, control and vulnerability.