Reading Harari. 21 Reasons

Abstract

The ink drawing depicts impressions of a hospital room and details of life-preserving equipment, such a s IV drips, a monitor, electrical wiring and a wash bowl. Central to the composition is a suggestion of a veiled figure flaked by loosely folded cloths lying on a trolley. The images are drawn in Indian ink over a dark ground, saturated with black Quink ink. When Quink ink is mixed with water, the colours separate into subtle hues of blue and warm undertones of brown. Apart from contrasting white, the only colour is a fleshy salmon pink highlighting the folds in drapes and the rhythm of the twirled cord. The techniques and colours have emotive connotations - inked soaked in the fibres of paper relate to the experience of trauma drenching one's spirit; the mostly tonal qualities of the drawing accentuate the absence in the experience of loss whilst the searching line and ghostly planes suggest their own narratives. They are images of sorrow, witnessing transient life. The work was created as part of the exhibition titled "Enfolding" a title that finds an echo in Gilles Deleuze' writing on The fold. The abstraction within work becomes an attempt to grapple with enfolding meaning and searches for a measure of insight into the journey we travel in our bodies. Deleuze (1993: 86) describes the human being as "monad" (an indivisible entity), who is a full expression of the "world, but obscurely and dimly because it is finite and the world is infinite...It is as if the depths of every monad were made from an infinity of tiny folds (inflections) endlessly furling unfurling in every direction, so that the monad's spontaneity resembles that of agitated sleepers who twist and turn on their mattresses.'" Apart from the direct reference to folds and the bed, the implied complexity relates to the theme of this exhibition. The title of the work stems from Yuval N Harari's 2018 publication that critically considers the intrusive presence of technology. In the instance of the drawing, this presence haunts, even in a time of sorrow.