This submission documents the evolution of the artist's public contemporary performance project, "SEE YOU," across its two volumes in Times Square, New York (Volume 1, August 2025; Volume 2, August 2026).
The project uses public endurance and physical stillness to investigate the subjectivity of human perception and connection.Volume 1 (August 2025) is captured in the accompanying time-lapse video, documenting the artist returning to the center of Times Square every hour across a full 24-hour cycle, standing completely motionless for one minute each time under the question:
"Do we truly see each other, or do we only look?"
The video is scored to an original musical framework created from own personal philosophical narrative. The soundscape features vocal tracking carefully directed by the artist to capture genuine vulnerability, asking questions
"How can we live, if we do not see?".
This debut achieved immediate public validation, featured in published articles and interviews across contemporary art platforms like ArtRabbit, Exibart, and Art HERstory, leading to the artist being named one of the most inspiring artists of 2025.Volume 2 (August 2026), debuting next month, expands the performance from a solitary act into a live participatory social sculpture under a new internal question: "Do I overlook you because I overlook myself?" The artist will return every hour for 24 hours, holding a different written word each time representing 24 individual words of beauty she overlooked in herself for years. Members of the public are invited to write a single word they overlook within themselves and come stand motionless beside her so no one stands alone. This upcoming cycle directly integrates commissioned physical paintings created with metallic colours that change significantly under different light and directly impact a perception of a viewer. The artist is addressing nowadays disconnection to thyself and is hoping this could create a positive impact in nowadays society.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT & DEDICATION:
"This project shall become a living and thriving piece of love, hope, and life. I have been extremely lucky to have had in my life people, whose behaviour has influenced me on a very profound human level.
Without an agency I want to thank Nikola Vesela, such a beautiful force of nature who has moved “unmovable rocks” to be there for me. She flew all the way from England to New York — as a mother of two beautiful beings — just to stand by my side, be my videographer, and share sleepless nights of creation. Her kindness, strength, and unwavering presence are one of the reasons this project came to life.
And then, there’s the quiet support of others — the kind that doesn’t always speak loudly, but shapes everything.
To my partner Matthew, who has witnessed my undoing, yet still he did not judge. He stayed. He held me. He showed me, that I am loveable, that I do not need to deserve love - none of us needs to. He is like a wind, who whistle’s slowly, fire providing passion, water calming and earth growing through my feet.
To Salma from ArtQueens gallery, for seeing a potential in my project and in me, far sooner than I could.
To my jungian and spiritual life coach Roseanna, who led me through dark corners of reality. Who supported me when my shadow was so dark, that I could not see a spark.
And to all those, who did not get scared in a darkness of my shadow.
To all those who fight. Despite the fright.
To all those living in kindness, to those who try to see. Not only look.
Also, this project is a quiet tribute to the life and legacy of Sarah Donnovin Hadley Dickinson, who sadly passed away last September. She was kind, patient, and a curious listener who made people feel truly seen — qualities that shaped me deeply. My memories of visiting her in Florida, her son Matthew who carries her legacy forward, and her brother Joseph, whose kindness, curiosity, and ethics I greatly admire, remain profound influences. Sarah touched my life in ways both direct and indirect. As I share these answers, I can’t help but wonder if the SEE YOU project would have come into being without her quiet yet powerful impact on how I understand seeing and being seen.This is a living example of how our behavior can ripple outward — showing that each of us can contribute to the world with more kindness, curiosity, and love."
DECLARATION:
I, Simona Ray, declare the following about every work in this submission, because my work is about honest seeing - and that must include how my work itself is made.
All paintings are physical canvases, painted by my hand. The colour you see shifting across each of them is not a digital filter but video of the canvases under different colored lights: I mix metallic acrylic colours directly into the paint, so the surface answers to real light - the painting at dawn is not the painting at midnight. Every photograph of the canvases documents them as they physically are, captured under real conditions.
The poems were written by me, at the easel, in the same moment as the brushwork. They appear verbatim - on the site, in the songs, and beside the paintings. The music on the site and inside Journey began as those poems and as melodies that arrived while I painted. To turn them into finished recordings, I used an AI music application to assist in the music creation: I provided my poems for the lyrics word-for-word and mastered the songs based on my melodic and stylistic direction, to reflect what I felt and heard while at the easel. The voices in these recordings are AI-rendered; the words, the intention, and every decision of what exists and what was deleted are mine. I hold the commercial rights to these recordings, and I disclose their how they were made here in full. They are a reflection of me.
The website and browser work were conceived, designed, and creatively directed entirely by me. The code was built and implemented with the assistance of Claude (Anthropic) as a software developer and technical advisor and fully based on my creative direction: every word, image, poem, sound, and structural idea is my own.
The See You Video was recorded by Dear Friend on an iPhone and the music embedded in the video is created as described above.
Beyond what is disclosed above, no third-party intellectual property has been incorporated into this submission, and no artificial intelligence was used in the creation of the paintings, the poems, videos, or the photographs.
I hand you my inner world - not because it is finished, but because it is honest and it is time to be shared!
~Simona Ray July 2026
