Art Book

Being thrown out of a community you felt belonging to is a surprisingly painful experience. It completely overtakes you and devastates you in ways you haven't expected.

The hardest part is that to an outsider it looks like nothing. Because it doesn't happen suddenly, but in very small, almost unnoticeable bits. When you try to explain it, it sounds as if you are making a big deal out of nothing. You just sound like someone who is reading too much into innocent phrases.

But the devastation doesn't come from single events—it comes from the accumulation of many such events over time, often from more than one person. The more you try to explain and stand up for yourself, the harder you are put aside. Until you end up completely broken and pushed out.

This book collects a series of 40 phrases that show how erasing a person happens—slowly but surely. Gathered from peers, superiors, and administrators who were supposed to offer support, each individual phrase can appear harmless, even friendly. But their progression over time, the fact that they come from different people, and the certainty with which you keep being sidelined is what makes them powerful and devastating.

A record of how seemingly ordinary interactions, accumulated over time, can have a destructive effect without a single overt act.