The Life (second work in ‘The Life’ trilogy). Turning Trauma into Art.
2 dots: birth and death.
2 artists: mother and son.
2 raped bodies.
2 souls seeking for peace.
2 fates.
2 roads.
2 hopes.
2 dreams.
2 extremes: black and white.
BACKSTORY.
She is 53. He is 27.
She became an artist at 52. He became an artist at 25.
She was raped at 20. She promised herself it would not ruin her life and became strong. He was raped at 11. He felt no one could be trusted and matured quickly.
She loved, provided for the family, developed her business, divorced, moved countries, and looked for herself. He crossed everything out, got into a new role, moved countries and schools, tried to harm himself, and sought death.
He served in the combat unit. He fought. She prayed for his life. He buried friends and brought death notices to mothers. She was waiting for him to come back home.
She knew that she could do more, launched new projects, fell, and rose again. He studied, quit, worked, explored his talents, and achieved his goals.
She suppressed the pain by surviving. He suppressed his pain by taking drugs.
It was July 2022:
He woke up and said, “This is not how my life is going to stay”.
She looked in the mirror and said “I deserve a better life”.
It was August 2nd, 2022.
They met and revealed the truth to each other.
He began a long journey of treatment and rehabilitation. She is learning to get rid of panic attacks and live without fear.
He is filming everything. He dreams of releasing a documentary about his life and developing psychological documentaries.
She endows dots with hidden meanings and combines them into artwork. She dreams of creating the most massive piece of art and breaking the world record for artistic collaboration.
They believe in themselves. They believe in art. They choose art as a way to a new life.
Description:
‘The Life’, on the surface, consists of only two dots and two colors. Don’t let this simplicity fool you, though: such a straightforward composition can actually symbolize our very existence.
Our life is defined by the duality of black-and-white, of bookends of time. Birth is the first dot on our life path, and death is the last. In ‘The Life’, I use this contrast as the foundation for a symbolic exploration of the inconsistent struggle between darkness (black) and light (white) experienced throughout our lives.
Black here symbolizes war, death, hatred, violence, fear, and defeat, so its accompanying dot features these attributes. Similarly, white signifies peace, life, love, freedom, joy, courage, and success (again captured in the accompanying dot).
In between these extremes lies a gray area, both metaphorically in our lives and literally in this composition. Though imperceptible to the naked eye, when magnified the center of this work becomes a gray zone. It is in this space that ‘The Life’ mirrors our realities and our endless search for answers. As Welsh author Jon Ronson has stated, “ . . . the gray areas are where you find the complexity, it's where you find the humanity and it's where you find the truth.” We seek our truth in shades of gray as we journey through these contrasts. And we find our own unique “shade” of truth, meaning, of happiness.
The artwork has two formats: Digital animated image (GIF) and printed artwork.
When the Digital Artwork is enlarged ‘The Life’ provides access to the attributes of darkness and light embedded therein as animation (for GIF format only). In the printed artwork I embedded only two words "Birth" and “Death”. It can be seen with a magnifier. In addition, I added an AR layer to the printed artwork. Therefore, if the image is scanned with the Artivive app it provides access to the animation of my attributes of darkness and light.