You Are Not Here

You Are Not Here is a multimedia installation that explores the paradoxical relationship between physical presence and mental absence. It reflects on the human capacity to inhabit multiple places simultaneously: while the body remains anchored in one location, memory, imagination, longing, and thought continually travel elsewhere. The work considers this uniquely human ability to transcend the immediate present through the mind, questioning what it means to truly "be" somewhere.

Developed during an artist residency in Mexico City, the project originated from an unexpected encounter. At a flea market, Tobias Molitor discovered a vintage postcard depicting a place already removed from its original context. The postcard—an object historically intended to bridge geographical distance through image and message—became the conceptual point of departure for the work. While living abroad, the artist repeatedly found himself thinking of home, mentally drifting away from his immediate surroundings. In one of these moments of self-awareness, he caught himself and silently remarked: you are not here. This simple sentence became both the title and the conceptual core of the installation.

The work unfolds in two interconnected layers. The first is the found postcard itself, an object that already carries associations of travel, nostalgia, memory, and mediated experience. The second layer is the artist's handwritten phrase, you are not here, reproduced on eighty duplicated versions of the original postcard. The handwritten intervention transforms an anonymous found image into a personal reflection while simultaneously inviting viewers to project their own experiences of displacement, absence, and longing onto the work.


Installed on a rotating postard display stand commonly found in tourist shops, the postcards occupy an ambiguous space between artwork, souvenir, and mass-produced commodity. The display invites viewers to browse, rotate, and encounter the work as they would in a commercial setting, subtly questioning the relationship between tourism and genuine presence. In an age of global mobility and constant digital connectivity, the installation suggests that travel does not necessarily guarantee presence, just as remaining in one place does not prevent the mind from wandering elsewhere.

Accompanying the postcard installation is a neon light sculpture reproducing the handwritten phrase you are not here. The illuminated text extends the work beyond the printed object, functioning as a persistent reminder that these moments of mental displacement occur regardless of time—during day or night, in moments of movement as well as stillness. The glowing script possesses both the immediacy of a personal note and the visual language of urban signage, oscillating between intimate confession and public statement.

Art historically, You Are Not Here resonates with traditions of conceptual art, text-based practices, and the use of found objects. It engages with the legacy of artists who employ language as both image and idea, while also drawing on the everyday aesthetics of the postcard as a cultural artifact. The work situates itself within contemporary discussions surrounding mobility, migration, tourism, and the increasingly fragmented experience of presence in a globally connected world. It acknowledges that our perception of place is never solely determined by geography but is continually shaped by memory, imagination, and emotional attachment.

Rather than presenting absence as a deficiency, You Are Not Here proposes it as an intrinsic condition of contemporary existence. The installation invites viewers to reflect on the fluid boundaries between here and elsewhere, presence and absence, reality and imagination, suggesting that these states are not opposites but coexist continuously within human consciousness.