This solo exhibition by Tony Dočekal explores the theme of coming of age through photography and video work: discovering who you are and searching for direction. The Paper Stars series originates from a portrait of Lyric, a girl growing up in contemporary Arizona, USA. The image, which has been widely shown and published in previous contexts, marked the beginning of a long-term photographic relationship in which Tony Dočekal continued to follow Lyric over several years. From this first encounter grew an ongoing project in which personal closeness and time play a central role.
Tony Dočekal says about the origin of the series:
When I first met Lyric, she was nine years old and living in a converted school bus in southern Arizona. When I asked her if she missed anything about her old life in Ohio, she said, “Just my friends. And paper to draw on.” A simple answer that contained something universal: the need to create and connect, to give meaning to what is at hand.
Over the past four years, I have returned to photograph Lyric as she enters adolescence and her relationship with the world begins to change. Friends and external values become important. Identity becomes something to be edited and revised: adolescence as a phase of self-reflection.
Time is visible in the work I made about Lyric through tiny moments of change. Lyric grows from nine to thirteen, the desert changes tone, and small fractures appear in the daily details. Some images show only a few seconds of difference; other images represent years. Together, they sketch how dreams stretch, fray, and take on new meaning, balancing between optimism and collapse.
The exhibition, titled “Paper Stars,” unfolds in layers: paper as a medium for expression, but also for bureaucracy; stars as the symbols we look to for direction in our lives, from children’s wishes to the stars sewn onto a flag.
The work reflects improvised structures that hold the world together: handwritten rules taped to a wall, a shop front patched up with cardboard, temporary repairs that keep things going when cracks begin to appear. What remains is a quiet form of perseverance, improvised and radiant in its own way.
Tony Dočekal (1992, Amsterdam) is a photographer and visual artist. In her work, she combines long-term projects with personal relationships, in which time, environment, and individual stories play a central role. Her work has been exhibited at Biennale Images Vevey, UNSEEN Amsterdam, and Museum MORE, among others. In 2024, her first book, The Color of Money and Trees, was published by VOID.