“Dear Alice, you want to know what I wish for. There are two decisive points, both of them of equal value: a harmonious togetherness within the family, and, at the same time, PEACE in the world”, Gisi wrote. It was her birthday, and I wanted to gift her something personal, although I was far away on that day. I hope that this smallest can materialise a chunk of this harmony. It is a wish and not a belief, but I also realise that wish and belief can converge.

When making it, my first thought was that peace in the world and harmony within the family can be considered the same state but at a different scale. It is within our families where we first learn social interactions as toddlers. Families, and we can read a family also broader as a chosen family, are the smallest and tightest-knit units of social life. If this unit practices harmony, could harmony spread throughout the world? Or are these units not that closely related, and different in character? Could a certain distance between the circle of the family and the circle of wider societal structures even act as a buffer zone enabling politeness and a respectful distance?

As I closed my eyes, I saw two circles of equal size and different colour flowing into one another. Concept-wise, they also reminded me of Rebeca’s belief. But when I started painting, I produced little lilac dots – seventeen, if I recall correctly – in one corner of the smallest, and seventeen orange dots in the other corner. A studio mate had offered to me to try out her new metallic marker that day. I first told her I didn’t know what I could potentially use it for, but as the creative process went along, of course this synchronicity proved to make sense. So, I came back to her and asked her for the metallic marker. The pen transformed the background of the smallest into a mirror plane. When you look at it, it looks back at you and reminds you that you are part of the whole, but also just a fraction of it – a fraction that interacts with and mirrors its surroundings, harmoniously embedded into them (yet edgy, wink, wink!). Thereafter, I revisited the dots. They wanted to grow into a plant connecting both sides. And as the petals grew bigger and bigger, more colours from the opposite side of the plant joined in. In the end, it is hard to see which flowers were initially just lilac, and which were just orange. They flourished together.