The Bright Light of Disappointment
Contemporary culture from dating apps and webcam platforms to pornography and sex products has mechanized intimacy, offering predictability and the illusion of emotional safety. For those shaped by fear of rejection, these technologies promise connection while reducing relationships to mutual satisfaction of needs. As sociologist Eva Illouz notes, we are living in an age of emotional capitalism. Yet despite the freedom to express and pursue desire, emotional distance and alienation persist.
Ekaterina Perfilieva’s In the Daylight project explores this emotional void. Her images present familiar erotic symbols: fragmented bodies, black stockings, white fluids within sterile white spaces, devoid of sensual context. These gestures, emptied of their original meaning, collapse under the harsh, clinical light that exposes the absence of intimacy, connection, and mystery. The visual language reflects the dissociation between sexuality and tenderness, underscoring the loneliness of fantasy-driven desire.
Psychoanalysis shows that sexualization often masks an inner lack — a defense against the anxiety of not being loved. The body becomes a medium for recreating early feelings of safety, yet the Other remains a projection of fantasy, avoiding the unpredictability of real emotional intimacy. Perfilieva’s work captures this melancholic tension, revealing how the pursuit of pleasure often obscures the deeper longing for love.
— Anna Komissarova, psychoanalyst and art critic
