A blank paper strip, folded into a fan.

A baby connected to its mother — ideally, as it grows, getting everything it needs from her.

The line runs past the mother to “happy, safe, satisfied”: the fantasy chain of child → mother → satisfaction.

Extended to a question mark — we can’t know what the baby feels; its cry says it needs something, routed through the Other.

A single fold to the right: the mother disappears, and an empty circle is revealed in her place.

Pull the strip out: the mother gives way to a space of lack. “What do you feel in those moments when you’re alone?”

The child names it. The fold works like a cut — here, the child wrote “anxious” in the gap.

Opened out: the whole graph — child, lack, the named symptom, the older child, “happy, safe, satisfied,” and the question that remains.