Eternity.001
Teresa G.
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Butterfly embodies the resilience of lovers in the afterlife, which is inseparable from death and all other forces, incarnating into eternality. The metamorphosis by which a moth penetrates the shell and turns into a butterfly is often deliberately conferred with concepts such as rebirth and reincarnation. With its identifiable wings and luminous, conspicuous motions, the butterfly flutters in the most unconstrained spiritual freeform. It is the presence of its odyssey and aura that determines its scarcity and resembles the unconcealed, eternal love. As spiritual and symbolic as its orthodox portrayal, the butterfly is also, in fact, the allegory of recurring afterlife love in China, as centralized in the renowned folktale The Butterfly Lovers. Hinged by parental disapproval, the two young lovers find eternality along the destructive and prompting force of love, where they embrace mortality by mutually reincarnating into butterflies. At the same juncture of every year, perhaps during the sprouting season, the butterflies return to where they were diminished, for their beloved ones. The reminiscences of love are not altered by a single nuance through death, for its retained prosperity and rigidness. This strong love, with its particular inalterability, greatly inspired me to produce my work. My vision is also obtained from the works of French sculptor Christian Boltanski, a respected artist who is dexterous at utilizing light and shadows to imply marginalized topics such as death, fragility, and memories. In his installment arts, the application of textures is deemed with allegorical meanings; in particular, reflection, illumination, and opacity symbolize illusions, hence the passing of loved ones.
To articulate on such behalf, I have carefully chosen durable materials such as plaster mold as the foundation of my work, accompanied by resins, lights, and threads to convey a fragile and intangible undertone, as elicited by the melancholy for the deceased. I placed the installment piece in two diagonal cardboards, drawing all the light sources to the dim but warm-toned LED lights inside of the hands. The obscure lighting and enclosed setting underline the themes of life and death. By recreating the shapes of hands using mold powders, I tend to present the living ones, as they are grasping very hard at the drooping threads, something untouchable. I twirled plain white papers into a shapeable string around the hands to locate and stabilize the butterflies, positioning them into fluctuating places to mimic their beautifully unconstrained movements, a critical affection discussed in my proposal. The butterflies are made out of resins and color pigments of low saturation, displaying opacity and highlighting the intangible and ethereal occurrence of death. The drooping threads held by the hands extend vaguely to the butterflies, unchaining them in a loose grasp. The interaction between the hands and butterflies is somewhat indicated by the sagging threads and durable paper strings, where they are merely untouchable but profoundly connected, resembling love across life and death.
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It is almost the most direct way of expressing who I am through my creativity in art. We embody such different emotions in the artwork we make and I just simply enjoy when people are having their own interpretations of the work that I make.
