DAVID KATSHIUNGA

Before we learn how to stand, we learn how to protect ourselves. Feuille Protecteur explores one of the most instinctive gestures of the human body: the act of folding into oneself when we feel vulnerable. The figure takes on an almost foetal position, knees drawn close, head lowered, the body becoming its own shelter. It is the position we once held in the womb, protected before we had even encountered the world. Yet the body seems to remember. In moments of fear, pain or uncertainty, even as adults, we instinctively return to a similar posture, as though folding inward could recreate a place of safety. The figure has no visible face, age or identity. This absence is intentional. The work is not the portrait of one individual, but a reflection of something profoundly human: our need to protect what is vulnerable within us. Here, fragility is not weakness. Protection itself becomes an instinct, a silent gesture connecting the child we once were to the adults we become. Perhaps the first gesture of protection we ever learn is also the one we never truly forget.