Thematic Art Exploration for 2023
To explore the tension between nature and logic. Instinct that creeps its way through rigid facades. Our internal voices chipping away at the ambition of external success metrics.
Instinct vs. intention
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Day 1 → aggregating, reflecting, artist statement
To explore the tension between nature and logic. Instinct that creeps its way through rigid facades. Our internal voices chipping away at the ambition of external success metrics.
Instinct vs. intention
I’ve been pondering the concept of our nature versus the logic and the boundaries that we as humans try to impose upon things. It seems the force of nature nature always finds a way to weave through barriers we construct - physically or logically - to make intuition shine.
I notice this in delicate weeds that - with persistence and time - find a way to tickle through the surface of a seemingly impermeable concrete pavement. The green earth flittering in the wind it meets, the land and the air once again united. Notice how humans have smeared concrete plaster across our natural landscapes. Every time I fly over Los Angeles, I see this sprawling scab we’ve built to control nature, resist it, and ultimately cover the beautiful plains of Southern California. But a scab ultimately heals and falls off revealing the nature underneath. Maybe I believe in these solarpunk futures. Where nature sprouts once again. Where we find natural harmony with the dirt we’ve been blessed to live on. Where we can breathe.
Nature’s campaign is a deeply personal phenomenon too. In the midst of Covid, the curveball life threw awarded me a chance to pause and look around and feel the existential questions that we often prolong till a midlife crisis. I saw, in a similar fate, tiny seeds of intuition weave tiny cracks through the concrete direction I had decided my life would take. I had invented a being guided by logical pragmatism. Each decision was built on these artificial notions of what my identity could be, mostly to avoid the central questions at the heart of my experience as a queer individual in this world, as someone who has been estranged from their parents for a long time, and someone who has made a habit out of cloistering my own desires and expression as a practice of blending in.
It was around this time in the midst of Covid when I decided to lean in. I took a break from school and spent my months in an intentional community in the heart of the Redwood forests of Northern California. This is where I began to learn the language of my intuition. I began leaning into this femininity within myself. Learning to follow directions instead of destinations I devised. Learning how to grow and cultivate a mindset that felt more in tune with my place here in this world. Embracing this counter cultural community was at odds with so much I had learned to expect out of my entire life. And it unlocked my emotional centers. And it unlocked a new way to approach and flow with the world. Nature and body meeting each other in a soft embrace.
The scab may be in the process of healing, but this a process I continue learning - will continue learning for the rest of my life. 22 years of habit don’t make it easy.
These thematic artistic explorations echo crossroads I find myself in. My personal focus of trying to tap into intuition, many expressions as internal emotional processing. Of trying to marry intuition with intention instead of letting myself get pushed by a course of logic.
They are reflections of my intuitive process and the themes of nature that break through our concrete narratives. They are juxtapositions of our constructed humanity and our honest humanity.
I notice this in delicate weeds that - with persistence and time - find a way to tickle through the surface of a seemingly impermeable concrete pavement. The green earth flittering in the wind it meets, the land and the air once again united. Notice how humans have smeared concrete plaster across our natural landscapes. Every time I fly over Los Angeles, I see this sprawling scab we’ve built to control nature, resist it, and ultimately cover the beautiful plains of Southern California. But a scab ultimately heals and falls off revealing the nature underneath. Maybe I believe in these solarpunk futures. Where nature sprouts once again. Where we find natural harmony with the dirt we’ve been blessed to live on. Where we can breathe.
Nature’s campaign is a deeply personal phenomenon too. In the midst of Covid, the curveball life threw awarded me a chance to pause and look around and feel the existential questions that we often prolong till a midlife crisis. I saw, in a similar fate, tiny seeds of intuition weave tiny cracks through the concrete direction I had decided my life would take. I had invented a being guided by logical pragmatism. Each decision was built on these artificial notions of what my identity could be, mostly to avoid the central questions at the heart of my experience as a queer individual in this world, as someone who has been estranged from their parents for a long time, and someone who has made a habit out of cloistering my own desires and expression as a practice of blending in.
It was around this time in the midst of Covid when I decided to lean in. I took a break from school and spent my months in an intentional community in the heart of the Redwood forests of Northern California. This is where I began to learn the language of my intuition. I began leaning into this femininity within myself. Learning to follow directions instead of destinations I devised. Learning how to grow and cultivate a mindset that felt more in tune with my place here in this world. Embracing this counter cultural community was at odds with so much I had learned to expect out of my entire life. And it unlocked my emotional centers. And it unlocked a new way to approach and flow with the world. Nature and body meeting each other in a soft embrace.
The scab may be in the process of healing, but this a process I continue learning - will continue learning for the rest of my life. 22 years of habit don’t make it easy.
These thematic artistic explorations echo crossroads I find myself in. My personal focus of trying to tap into intuition, many expressions as internal emotional processing. Of trying to marry intuition with intention instead of letting myself get pushed by a course of logic.
They are reflections of my intuitive process and the themes of nature that break through our concrete narratives. They are juxtapositions of our constructed humanity and our honest humanity.
