Love and Anger (2024)

Dimensions: CLOSED: 47 x 39 x 4 cm; OPEN: 47 x 77 cm

Materials: brass, oil paints, oil pastels, paper, nails, varnish, acrylic, plexiglass, cloth, bronze powder, hair ashes, soil, blood on wood

Artwork description: This work is an intimate self portrait, representing a portal to travel within spacetime, reflecting on how love and anger can transcend many generations and manifest in the future. The piece raises questions about paths to take and one’s ability to have agency, or not, when at a crossroad. These reflections are visually represented, but also metaphorically told, through materials such as hair pigment and blood, representing what the artist grew up being angry about, but has learned to love with time. Soil from the artist’s hometown is also used, acting as a fertile ground for these thoughts and ideas to take shape.
When the artwork is closed, the viewer is faced with a landscape on which love, on the left, and anger, on the right, are both growing and fruiting. The figure at the middle is then faced with a choice. What path will they take, what fruits will they pick? Once the artwork is opened, the viewer can see anger whispering to the central figure, sweet talking them to walk away from love. These words are enticing and easy to fall into, as love requires one to do the work of opening up their heart. Love requires an active choice to take agency in the path one chooses.
Finding a balance between love and anger does not mean negating either, as they both hold value and wisdom, and both ultimately share the same origins. This also brings up questions that remain unanswered. If everything on a cosmic scale comes from the same source, then how do we find balance between it all? As chaos blurs the lines and linear paths are obsolete, how can we know we are making the right choices? Despite all these uncertainties, and even though nothing is set in stone, the past undeniably shapes the future and energy gets passed down throughout spacetime. This happens on a small scale, in an individual life, on a bigger scale, generationally, and on a cosmic scale, in the creation and development of the universe. Ultimately, if love is sowed, then love will fruit somewhere along the line, the same goes for anger. Which fruits to bite into is a decision that will shape the paths of the future.