Meu Homer, Meu Amor

Homer entered my life as a stray cat. She was grey, young and undernourished, and I named her after the poet before discovering that she was female. The name stayed.

What developed between us became Meu Homer, Meu Amor: a project about attachment, care and the ordinary encounters through which love becomes visible.

At the time, I was living with depression, anxiety and the aftermath of trauma. Caring for Homer gave my days a different centre. There was another creature to notice, feed and respond to. Our relationship grew through repeated, practical acts.

A love story in small moments

The camera followed those moments. Rather than beginning with an elaborate performance, I was paying attention to a relationship already unfolding.

A cat's presence can reorganise a room and a routine. The place she chooses to sleep, the way she watches you, the interruption of a task: these become the details through which a shared life takes shape.

As I photographed Homer and shared the work, the private relationship became a story other people could encounter. Social media, which had also been a site of difficult exposure in my practice, could carry tenderness.

The project eventually moved into an exhibition context. But its foundation remained the intimacy of daily life: the observation of a particular animal, and the care that passed between us.

Receiving as well as giving

It would be easy to describe the story only as my rescue of Homer. That would leave out what she offered me.

The care was not symmetrical in any literal sense. I provided food, shelter and safety. Yet her companionship changed how I inhabited my days. I could be needed without having to perform an idealised version of myself.

That experience matters within a practice so often concerned with identity and visibility. Love did not depend on a persuasive profile, a successful performance or recognition from an institution. It existed in our attention to one another.

Meu Homer, Meu Amor taught me to value this quieter register of creative life. An artwork does not always need to begin with a declaration. It can begin with noticing what is sustaining us.

The photographs hold a relationship rather than an argument. They invite a viewer into the small world we made together, where care became a routine and routine became something worth remembering.