Under Four Eyes

November 1-January 31, 2026

photo by Bianca Bakonyi/torpedo factory art center

photo by Bianca Bakonyi/torpedo factory art center

cocoji collage in hangari jars || photographs of flowers taken by artist's mother spanning the last 15 years, including personal and historic archival photos

cocoji collage in hangari jars || cocoji arrangement of personal photo archives and organic materials

cocoji collage in hangari jars || photographs of flowers taken by artist's mother spanning the last 15 years, including personal and historic archival photos

photo by Bianca Bakonyi/torpedo factory art center

photo by Bianca Bakonyi/torpedo factory art center

photo by Bianca Bakonyi/torpedo factory art center

photo by Bianca Bakonyi/torpedo factory art center

photo by Bianca Bakonyi/torpedo factory art center

photo by Bianca Bakonyi/torpedo factory art center

Under Four Eyes
Torpedo Factory Art Center
Post-Graduate Residency
Alexandria, VA

What can the body hold that the archive cannot?

Under Four Eyes is a decentralized, embodied counter-archive project that gathers oral histories, field recordings, and rituals centered on intergenerational knowledge exchange.

Embodied that insists on movement and shape —gesture, ritual, and the struggle to remember as legible and valid modes of preservation.

The project takes its name from a German idiom—“unter vier augen”—which refers to private, intimate exchange between two people. Rooted in grassroots organizing methodologies, I’m interested in the archive that uses one-on-one conversation as both an artistic form and survival strategy.

And within this form I’ve been asking: What does it mean to pass down knowledge in hushed tones? How do we teach our communities to safeguard artists’ work during crises, outside institutional spaces—through neighbors, friends, and family?

During my time at the Torpedo Factory Post-Grad residency, the studio is transformed to mirror my umma’s tailor shop as I work through another form of soft mending, not with clothes but memory.

The residency concluded in a group exhibition of the post-grad residents at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, more details here.