ARTWORK COMMENTARY: Past, Present, and Future

Finished: July 2022

Dimensions: 19” x 45”

This piece oddly means a lot to me, both as the first real drawing I have done since I graduated and as a visual representation of what I see as the past, present, and the future. The piece is overall inspired by Buddhist aesthetics and southeast Asian flora, with bright, striking warm colors to instill a sense of intensity around the black and white figures.

The past is a skeleton with a Kebaya, the Indonesian traditional dress. The top of its head has been removed and replaced with flowers as it reaches up for something far from it.

I feel as though it’s easy to romanticize the past. That as time goes by, we live through the complications of the modern world and pray for simpler times- when times then weren’t simple at all. As we forget about the consequences of history, we are bound to repeat it as our view of it gets rosier. Atrocities are dressed up and covered, but the skeletons will always be there to remind us of the struggles of ‘then’.

The present is an Indonesian folk creature called the leyak; a creature torn from the bottom down and cursed to float upon earth and feed on pregnant women’s blood. Her head melts into her eyes like a candlestick.

This creature was made shortly after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. She represents the stripping of humanity from the human- as she contorts and melts, no mouth to voice her pain. Would anyone even listen if she screamed?

The future is a deer’s skull with barren branches growing out of it on top of a starving body. It holds up a Buddhist hand signal, a mantra of protection.

I have never been an optimistic person. My vision of the future is wilting and cold. Humans have succumbed to their selfishness and costed our planet and ourselves. But as the earth does, the future survives. It will go on even if we don’t. Though, I don’t believe we should be afraid of the future. I believe we should do everything we can to build a future where everyone has a chance to be happy- and if it still ends in ruins, then we can go out knowing we tried. I run on the fuel that I just want everyone I meet and see to be okay, a feeling I wish I had when I was younger.