Hello

Oona Bovri (1997) is a photographer based in Antwerp. In her series Hello, she explores the fragile boundary between memory and reality. What begins as a return to her father’s photographic archive evolves into a layered exploration of how memories are formed, shift over time, and sometimes detach from what was once real. The starting point for the series emerged during the pandemic, when a song; Hello It’s Me by Todd Rundgren, triggered a vivid memory. A memory that later turned out not to be shared. In that moment, a question surfaced: what does a memory mean if it is not recognised by someone else?

Within Hello, Bovri works with different layers: reinterpretations of existing memories, an ode to what truly happened, and fragments that are entirely fictional, yet could have existed. The line between fiction and non-fiction gradually dissolves. She describes her work as a kind of surreal biography, not of facts, but of experience. Her process does not begin with images, but with language. Using pen and paper, she develops scenes, often in the form of a script. For this series, the process became more intuitive and direct: a single A4 page with small moments served as the starting point. Not major events, but fragments that might otherwise go unnoticed. This way of working finds its origin in her childhood, where imagination and observation were central. Growing up in a creative environment, she learned to observe, to wait, and to create from intuition.

Today, this approach continues to shape her work. Bovri repeatedly returns to a more instinctive way of seeing, a perspective that leaves space for the unresolved. Her images hold that space. They invite the viewer to imagine what exists just beyond the frame, before or after the moment that is captured.