JANVIER
NG

Emotions can be physical and mental, especially negative ones. Part of the human condition is that the body reacts to these emotional shifts. 

 

The emotions that dominate my exhibition are heartbreak, loneliness, discomfort and torment. My works have been informed by my personal experiences as a growing person who has faced hardships in platonic relationships and coped with these negative emotions. Dealing with increasingly complex emotions becomes a challenge to my body and my state of mind. However, through the creation of art, I have a better understanding of myself, and it has been a process of learning and acceptance of these changes.

 

Bodies and body parts are recurring motifs in my work. Through exploring the body, I have tried to convey explicitly and implicitly ideas of vulnerability, distress and torture. Utilising parts of the body allows the audience to connect directly with the work, going beyond empathy and a straight link to their own emotions. The works range from realistic, expressionistic and abstract styles to express the explicit and implicit states of mind. The body is used as a physical representation of emotions happening internally. I have used the motif of the heart and created figures posing in a foetal position as metaphors for the vulnerable and fragile emotional states. There are also other figures in a twisted and falling positions used as a metaphor for the mental distress of the mind beating itself. The physically twisted and distorted falling figures are projections for mental distortion, a loss control over the mind and body. They also link to concepts of falling in a religious sense and Icarus falling from the sky. 

 

Other than that, symbolism is continuous in my artworks. I have included objects such as hearts, heads, and hands, and used colours for their universal symbolism. Fragile materials such as tissues, torn photographs and wax are used to convey the fragile and delicate state of mind. These depictions and metaphors allow the audience to make a direct association with the figures to understand the implicit and explicit meanings. The work intentionally guides the audience to experience discomfort and unease.  

 

The arrangement of my exhibition is divided into three groups, hearts, heads and falling figures, and where possible I placed the sculpture in front of the relevant 2D images, to allow the audience can see the connections. The sculptures, which generally has the greater impact being all life sized, creates a greater sense of empathy and physical relation with the viewer, and will draw them to the relating works behind. 

 

The first group is the hearts. Here the work is the most expressionistic. Red is used to symbolise both love, passion, blood and violence as the work explores heartache in an aggressive manner. In the latter heart pieces, red disappears and black appears as the work becomes less violent and more about the internal emotions where the audience can empathise with the suffering of heartache. In the second group I explore pose. Here faded colours and the position of the heads and limbs suggest sadness, loneliness and melting away. The fragile state of mind is suggest by the drips and rips. The final section of my exhibition uses the metaphor of falling. Falling relates to loss of control, doom, uncertainty, plummeting and some kind of impeding harm. These figures are twisted and distorted, exaggerating the pose to convey the loss of control and distorted mind. Here I mostly use black and white colours to convey the cold truth of the raw and negative emotions that appear in every life.

 

I want the audience continuously make connections to themselves and thinks and questions themselves to understand how negative emotions can consume the body and mind. As the arrangement of the works move from explicit to implicit meanings, hopefully, they realise the significance of their emotions in their own bodies as an understanding of the human condition.