A translucent (second) skin
Stretched over and melting and merging,
Pulling and reaching for a bridge,
But still weighed in the Earth.
The work revolves around the multiple perceived selves present in me, as well as in every human being. They are the selves in your head, your dreams, your family, your significant other, even in strangers. It is a quest for desperate connection in a cup full of holes that cannot be filled by itself. These multiple perceived selves are represented by three main struggles that inhibit me – although they appear to have the same Face, it is as though they are donning a mask, camouflaging themselves to stay hidden. The only figure who does not wear a mask holds an empty cup, as if to protect it while they obediently succumb to the hands that cradle their face.
Distance, detachment-reattachment, longing, the struggle of a cup that never fills.
Festering growths protrude from the chests of the figures, growing, extending and entangling into one another. They are becoming one Self, consuming each other.
Flinching at the slightest change of tone, sore hands, a bitter taste.
The hands reach into one another – infecting, cradling, protecting. They are of utmost importance to me. "The hands which scoops up water is the first vessel. The fingers of both hands intertwined are the first basket...Hands and faces were the instruments of these transformations and their significance. The specific life of the hands, in this its earliest sense, still retains its pristine force in gesticulation."
– Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power
To appear and function here only as pure intensities.