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Self-Portrait No.2(RED)
Year: 2007
Size: 7’ 17’’
Materials: Projector、Media Player、Computer、Speaker
Description:
This series of works, “Autotomy,” is comprised of three parts. Its concept is derived from the poem, “Autotomy,” by Polish poet, Wislawa Szymborska. The artist creates a new composition by rewriting various parts of “Autotomy” and combining lines from another one of his poems, “Seen From Above”. This new composition forms the basis for the images’ expressions of betrayal, love, desire and death.
Szymborska’s poem, “Autotomy,” alludes the methods employed by a holothurian to escape from death despite the pain to an inevitable occurrence in the nature. To most of us, there are always too many catastrophic events that determine whether we live or die. We are powerless in our attempts to forget, while we embellish and render the importance of each event. Yet, with poetry, we persist in trying to mourn and remember these broken moans of the past that never return. These indelible experiences become an abyss that we may never exorcise from ourselves, entangled in perpetuity.
I used the imagery of layered entanglement featured in Szymborska’s poem, “Autotomy,” to represent betrayal, love, desire and death. I feel that a body covered by layered entanglement is like a dead beetle lying in the middle of the road. Shining under the sun and not mourned by anybody, it inspires the thought: It is as if nothing important has happened.
This exhibition displays the third part, “Self-Portrait No.2 (Red).” It comes from my personal close encounters and experiences with death. They are something that cannot be shaken or forgotten.
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