Aurora - Chosen

I first gazed into the image of the Mona Lisa as a small girl, barely four years old, while flipping through a stack of children’s picture cards. Among all the images, it was hers that caught my eye and completely captivated me. I didn’t know who she was, I didn’t know her name, but something deep inside me already recognized her.

Her presence awakened something ancient within me, something that spoke directly to my heart.

Many years later, she once again captured my attention. No longer in the form of childhood picture cards, but now in high school classrooms and later at the Academy, through the voices of professors, in theory and analysis. Art history lectures revealed her as a masterpiece of Renaissance perfection, through which Leonardo’s genius transcended conventional perceptions of the human being and the world. Art theory especially emphasized his technique, his invention of atmospheric perspective and the use of sfumato, that misty softness that blends light and shadow in gentle transitions.

But more than the facts, it was always her presence that spoke to me.

I was never just an observer, I was, and still am, present somewhere within her. In her gaze, and in her silence. And perhaps it was no coincidence that my classmates often called me "Mona Lisa", at first playfully, because of my calm demeanor and the quiet look in my eyes that didn’t always reveal my thoughts. Yet beneath the jest, there lingered a quiet truth, as if they had intuitively sensed something more. Maybe I do resemble her slightly in appearance, but the deeper resemblance lies in a feeling, in that silent inner space that doesn’t speak with words, but with a gaze.

And when my eyes finally met hers in the Louvre, I stood frozen. As if something held me in place and anchored me in the eternity of that moment. Her eyes looked at me as if they had always known me, and in that timeless instant, something within me came full circle. Without words, without thoughts, a connection happened, one I can hardly describe. It felt as though we were breathing together.

That day, I truly understood that the Mona Lisa is not just a work of art. She is a space, a silence that recognizes your own silence.

Many years later, from that inner connection, the poem Chosen was born, now part of the Aurora collection. It is a poem about her, about one who is not chosen because she is more, but because she holds a memory within. A memory of tenderness, of timeless beauty that does not shout, but simply is and speaks of a sacredness that needs no explanation.

In the same breath of passion that birthed the poem, a painting was born too. I painted a self-portrait in which I portrayed her through myself, or perhaps myself through her. It is an abstract composition in which I captured my longings, my inner peace, and my unrest through a continuous flowing line. The expression, formed in fluid shapes, is not merely aesthetic, it is a reflection of the inner current of gentleness that speaks without words.

This self-portrait was never meant as a replica of a famous work, but rather as a quiet homage to her presence. It is a subtle gesture of recognition, not only of her, but of myself.

Chosen is a poem about inner beauty, about a recognition that doesn’t come from the outside, but from the depths of awareness.

With Love, Ines