An exploration of the emotional geography of coming into adulthood under late capitalism. An autobiographical question: Am I the only one who feels this way? A heap of broken images. A clarion call into the void. An assemblage of resonant moments. A story of individuals atomized, of being sold a lie by society, of becoming a waking ghost, haunting your own life, of permanent crises that overwhelm and defy comprehension. An anatomy of revolutionary precursors. Leave your dead gods behind. Soon, all these plants will wither and die. Speak now, or forever hold your peace.
/
/
"It is now easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism."
- Fredric Jameson
/
/
This is a deeply personal series that is as much about capturing aspects of late capitalist adulthood from my own life as it is about bigger ideas that have haunted me for years. Some motivating questions for the project included:

Can origami mean something? Can folded paper tell a story that others will see themselves in? Why is it that representational origami almost never tries to do either? Can I tell a larger story, make a larger argument through a series of works in a medium that rarely comes close to addressing the things that I think are elephants in the room?

The elephants being:

Why make art on a dying planet torn by late capital's endless crises? Why spend countless hours making art when those hours could be spent trying to prevent said planet from dying? Is there any ethical way to justify not spending all the time I have preventing the apocalypse?

Why does being an adult in our society mean working 40+ hours a week? Is everyone as burned out, exhausted, isolated, lonely, betrayed, and disappointed as I am with this hollow shell we call adulthood, this draining, repetitive, autopilot thing we call life? Is this all there is?

With the elephants named, can they be changed?

Hands speak. A gesture, a pose, a symbol, a story told without words or face. Hands express. They hold memories, emotions, ideas, multitudes. These aren't any hands though; they're mine. Literally.

The process for this series was unique and experimental. Each work was formed by moulding wet paper around my own hand, a living physical reference inextricably tying each work to me. Self expressions. My body. My stories. My emotions. My fragility.

Because unlike Rodin's hands, these ones aren't made of bronze, of marble. They're hollow, fragile shells, empty referents, signifiers of a missing sign, the map mistaken for the territory. The author isn't dead, just missing, gone, vanished. Fuck Barthes, fuck interpretation. This is hyperreality.

The medium is the message.
The process is the point.
The medium is the message.
The process is the point.