Birthday
Birthday can be read as a metaphor for creation, the powerful will to overcome obstacles, a moment of clarity, self-knowledge, vulnerability as well as the actual painful entering in the harsh reality of the world.
I use my art to dig deep in my subconscious, to find out what are my most urgent emotions. Many unresolved conflicts in school during my bachelor’s degree at HDK-Valand inspired me to make a series of fictionalized scenes.
These scenes circle around complex characters that are in danger or have sharp conditions in their lives. I amplify their conditions with attributes charged with symbolism, such as hope and anticipation in the butterfly pasta (Farfalle), origin and heritage in the anchor, destructiveness in cigarettes, defence or survival in pistols, a broken chain as a symbol of liberation and beans around the new-born or reborn that refers to the American term “spilled my beans” which means that one is omitted.
The psychological underlying themes treat power battles, parental abandonment, threats, bullying, repressed pain, revenge, survival strategies, self-love, liberation and hope.
My primary characters were initially Vincent van Gogh and Annie Oakley. Two role models that both dared to be different and transformed crippling conditions and suffering into great things.
The making of Birthday was a joyful liberation process, a vehicle to empower myself and try to shake off limiting expectations.
