with love, from the future

If you could speak to your younger self, what would you say? What would you want them to know about the life waiting for them, the things they couldn’t yet understand, the parts of themselves they were taught to hide, or the possibilities they couldn’t yet imagine?

For many of us, there was no roadmap. No mirrors. No one who looked like us, loved like us, or showed us what was possible.

This is that mirror

With Love, From the Future is an evolving collection of letters from LGBTQIA+ people to their younger selves. An invitation to speak across the distance between who we were and who we are becoming, to offer the words we needed, the truths we discovered, and the things we are still learning to make peace with.

Together, these letters form a living archive of queer experience, holding all its complexity, contradiction, tenderness and possibility. Not a promise that everything gets better, but a reminder that our stories are still being written.

With Love, From the Future extends beyond the screen and into public spaces as an evolving, participatory art installation, inviting people to become part of a collective act of remembrance, reflection and connection.

At its heart is a large public blackboard and an Offering Table, where visitors are invited to sit with their younger selves for a moment. To write the words they wish someone had spoken, share what they’ve come to understand, or offer something they are still learning. A letter might be carefully typed on a vintage typewriter, written by hand, or left as a few spontaneous lines on the blackboard.

These offerings become part of something larger than the moment in which they were written. With each contributor’s permission, letters can find their way into the online archive, where a message left at a festival sits alongside one written at 2am on a phone screen. Different lives, different moments, held with the same care.

I’ve always been drawn to people’s stories. The things we carry, the experiences that shape us, and the parts of ourselves we sometimes struggle to put into words. I believe that when we share something of our lives, we offer others a chance to recognise something of their own. A feeling they thought was theirs alone, a truth they hadn’t yet found the language for, or a possibility they couldn’t quite imagine.

Much of my work as an artist and photographer comes from this curiosity, and from a desire to create spaces where people feel seen and their experiences are valued. With Love, From the Future grew from that same place, but with a question I’ve been carrying for a long time: what might we say to our younger selves if we had the chance?

Photography is another way I explore these connections. Some of the letters in this archive will find their way into photographic works, becoming part of a wider conversation between words, images and the places we inhabit. Others will simply exist as they are, because sometimes the words themselves are enough.

What moves me most is the thought of someone reading a stranger’s letter and finding a little of themselves within it. Perhaps feeling less alone, or seeing their own life through a different lens.

That’s what I hope this space can offer.