Susan Daboll’s A Journey to Presence (2024) is an evocative, site-specific installation taking us into five intimate spaces: the kitchen, the theater, the office, the room of her present self and the exit room. Each room is metamorphosed into a metaphorical step in Daboll’s personal and artistic odyssey, beginning with the kitchen—a tribute to her grandmother, her first spiritual guide and the conduit to her inaugural encounter with an artist’s studio. The kitchen, a place of warmth and unconditional love, echoes with the gentle, nurturing presence of her grandmother, whose influence has quietly persisted throughout Daboll’s life. The act of renovating her own kitchen becomes a symbolic gesture of transformation. Here, Daboll grapples with the tumultuous praxis of deconstructing the past—hammering and chiselling away at the inherited vision of another to make room for her own. This metaphorical demolition and reconstruction are embodied in the second room, where she manifests her “new me” through a thoughtful selection of colours, materials, and objects, reflecting a bold assertion of identity and creativity. In the third room, the artist pursues the symbolic relationship between art and the spiritual realm, highlighting the journey from intellectual understanding to visceral experience. this space voices the shift from cognitive processing to an embodied exploration of authenticity—a journey from the head to the heart, and ultimately to the soul. It is a reminder that true comprehension often requires the courage to feel deeply and viscerally. The fourth room encapsulates the delicate tension of the “present me”, where Daboll confronts the overwhelming luminosity of self-realisation leading towards the exit, the catharsis. This glimpse of transcendence is as intimidating as it is illuminating, prompting a retreat to the familiar comforts of human imperfection. It is a poignant, ongoing dialogue between the self and the spirit, where both artist and viewer venture into the beauty and difficulty of embracing an ever-evolving present, accepting that each step forward is both an ending and a beginning.