Null, as an adjective, means something “without value, effect, consequence, or significance.” It can also mean “being or amounting to nothing, lacking, or nonexistent.” (Null) Though the word means nothing, the feeling of nothing can hold so much. Grappling with themes of nihilism, derealization, and how pain and pleasure bring us out of these states, Null manifests my struggle with existence.
This three-photo series displays the tension between pain and pleasure and how the two walk a fine line, like love and hate. The photographs are alluring to the viewer with the attraction of the shiny metals, but the spectator realizes that the sculptures (bed of nails, barbed wire, and spike patch) would cause harm if touched. We always want to touch the things we cannot. We always want to feel if something is hot even though we know it will burn us.
With semiotics implemented in our everyday lives, the colour red’s motifs further develop this alluring charm. The shade is a colour of duality, it is hot, it is inflamed, it can be painful, but it is also passion, love, lust, and the epitomes of pleasure.
This world was created because of the pressure I felt due to obligations, responsibilities, and societal expectations. To succumb to the idea of life where your glass may never be more than half full, what is the purpose of that? I had begun my process of these sculptures thinking about Roland’s theory of the punctum. ‘As photographs punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me,)” (Barthes, 26) and created this sentence into a literal, physical object that had pricked and bruised me, reducing me to tears.
OCAD University Bachelor of Fine Arts thesis show, displayed at Grad Ex 100, Toronto, Canada.