What did breakups used to be like? Was it easier to move on back when we didn’t have to unfriend or block our ex? Is the possibility of seeing their face or reading their commentary on life on a daily basis too tempting? Or is it just that we’re constantly reminded of how they broke our hearts?
There are plenty of apps out there that help us with the process. They block out any notifications from your former flame so you don’t have to rehash everything as you scroll through your friends’ pictures. Still I think this is just as conflicting because you have to actually tell your phone that you don’t want to know about this person.
Just when I’m about to forget someone, life seems to play a cruel trick by placing a picture of their smiling self next to their new beau, as I’m opening my social Media apps first thing in the morning.
As I see them moving on with their lives, I wonder whether I’ll ever get past this. How can I outlive the pain? I don’t want to unfriend or block because I don’t want them to think I care too much. All I want is to finish this chapter. Yet their constant reminder pushes me back to the place where they left me.
Heitor Magno is a web artist who creates works that combine photography and digital art. Through blurry, scratched, pixelated, or burned off faces, he creates commentary on what it means to exist in both real life and social media.
In the artist’s words, “I want my work to be an extension of my feelings, and each person can read the image freely.”
Seeing these faces scratched or burned off is not unlike the desire to erase someone from our memory or sight. We don’t want to see the eyes we fell in love with. We don’t want to be reminded of the smile that took our breath away. When we encounter the one who promised love, but only gave us despair, embracing someone new, we can’t help but relive all the pain we thought we’d already left behind.
Magno’s pictures strike us because we imagine the face behind the glitchy blur. It’s liberating to imagine that the person we wish to forget lies beneath the pixelated mess, as if we’re burning away the memory of all the things we want to forget.
Technology is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we can block and delete someone from our lives. But on the other, we can be dismissed and forgotten just as fast as well. We exist between these extremes, trying to find balance and a sense of love and understanding. But will erasing someone actually heal us? Or will it doom us to fall into a pattern of seeking those who only hurt us?
You can check out more of Heitor Magno’s works on his Instagram.
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