Visual self-portrait

Petra Péterffy is a Budapest-born collage designer, now based in Berlin and just starting to unleash her creativity. She is full of life and drive, buzzing with a huge wish list for the next few years and her artistic endeavours. Péterffy takes inspiration from pretty much everything that crosses her path. To this end, she records her impressions in a small notebook – or with one of her vintage cameras. Imbued with plenty of passion, she loves to show people and objects in a different context, gives her pictures room to breathe and tell their own stories or depicts situations from alternative perspectives. Ambitious to the core, her elaborate works take time to reach the finishing line: After all, Péterffy’s collages are easily as complex as her interests and goals.

What is usually your mood when you wake up in the morning?
This image depicts the blurred boundary between sleep and wakefulness. In the morning, I took a photo of my face from a slightly unusual angle; a perspective neither you nor anyone else normally catches you in. For colours and shapes I photographed the plants in our apartment as well as some trees on the street. I wanted to incorporate elements that surround me in the morning

What was the craziest dream you ever had?
A typical and recurring scene would be me trying to protect small, helpless creatures – animals, children, babies … sometimes they shrink to such tiny sizes or turn into small beetles that I end up losing them. In other dreams I find myself threatened – but never really attacked – by wild animals.

Actually, I recently reviewed a few notes on past dreams and came across a very beautiful dream where I try to save a dying white horse. It was very heavy and drowning in black water – it became progressively harder to keep it afloat. So I combined this dream with another where three tigers enter my home and simply roam around while I am hiding inside of a wardrobe.

What does home mean to you?
This image illustrates a nostalgic feel; memories of my childhood days. The black/white background represents this past. The coloured balls not only serve as toys for the protagonists, but also make up a kind of social galaxy that surrounds us as children.

What would you like to change about yourself?
Nothing is really ordered or organised in this picture – everything is afloat.
So, this is about having too many thoughts and ideas oscillating inside my brain and starting to grow – just like the plant growing out of my head in this image.

If you could play a role in a film, who would you play?
When you set eyes on this scene, you can only guess what might happen next – most likely, the protagonist will take another step and then fall into the hole in the street or descend into the abyss. It is this mystery that defines the scene. While everything is bright as day, this eerie sheen prevails. Take a closer look and you will discover animals lurking in the bushes.

All images © Petra Péterffy | Via: mb! by Mercedes-Benz