III
When I was deep in the woods and locked eyes with a lone wolf, I felt my own gaze return to me. I broke our stalemate by lunging forward. The wolf ran faster than I could follow and like a play of the light they were gone. Now I am the dog that bites.
In my art, I focus on the relation between environment and spirituality by looking at the collective unconscious. My family background in Indonesia shows such a tension between indigenous animism and colonial severance. I look at how schizophrenia within my family exists not only due to physical displacement, but also displacement of the spirit. There is no distinct line between fiction and reality.
I see animals and bodies of water in my dreams and try to find their counterparts in the physical world. The ocean is the current main stage of these productions and forms a link to generations past. To cross an ocean is to pass between this world and the other and tap into our collective memory.
My wish is to understand how I, as severed as I am from the natural world and ways of my ancestors, can heal a spiritual bond that perseveres the severance that has occurred in the physical realm. Could the dog ever become a wolf again?