il faut imaginer sisyphe heureux

the Destruction of Adam

The name comes from the famous painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel which depicts God creating Adam. God is depicted in a higher part of the painting with his arm pointing downwards to reach for Adam, and Adam is the opposite - obviously because God is the higher being. In my picture, the black hand is presented as the one which is higher reaching downwards, and the white hand is the one which must reach upwards to touch. Also, a thing to note, the white hand is on the side which God is on, and the black hand is on the side of Adam - this is to show the superiority complex that existed and still exists. The black hand is above the white one, which you'd assume has the same meaning as the Creation of Adam where it's a lower being reaching for a higher one. However, we can clearly see the knife on the forearm of the white hand, which represents almost a trick, a betrayal - normally when people have knives they hide them, but the white hand is very vocal about the motivation and actions they are willing to take/have taken. But the black hand doesn't have a weapon, because they know what it is like to be oppressed for centuries and wouldn't wish it upon anyone. We know as humans that society was created with whites on top and blacks on the bottom, and I felt like having the black hand above was a good way of trying to present the idea of if the roles were reversed. I'll quote someone's thoughts on this piece to finalise the analysis because they added a new thought which I loved: "The white finger is outstretched as if the energy required to reach the black is overbearing yet a touch of black fingertips would suffice. but the knife reminds you that the black society is being reeled back in. and the black fingertips touching are necessary to underline white society as whites steal black culture and make it their own to survive". Finally, I created this piece when the Black Lives Matter movement was it's peak in June of 2020. I know it seems like it was just a trend but the fight never stops. BLACK LIVES STILL MATTER.

dancing with the devil in pale moonlight

The name of this piece comes from my all-time favourite villain, The Joker - more specifically, the Jack Nicholson interpretation. When I was researching the quote itself - I noticed that something that Joaquin Phoenix was good at showing was, that you only just need one bad day to set you off into a spiral. One bad day being one dance with the devil and the gun helps signify the dance with the devil itself. the pale moonlight is meant to signify a spotlight, so the quote in it's most basic form means have you ever committed a crime in front on a stage, or in public/in front of everyone? Hence why I tried to colour the picture with the intent of presenting the idea of me standing underneath a pale moonlight. The lip is supposed to almost signify something seductive and in a way, I wanted it to seem like flirting with death. The gun on the lips is flirting with the idea of playing with the devil. The same person as the last piece also gave his thoughts on this piece and I'd like to show that too because it's a nice way of phrasing something I was trying to show: "The gun to your head could also signify a crime in the eyes of the church and they believed suicide to be, thus both suicide. With the devil reinforcing the religious background but also being analogous to the death caused by the gun. The gun is as much a social instrument as a physically violent one, so a dance is an adequate description." It's a picture I'm really proud of, I feel like the quote works perfectly hand-in-hand with the picture and it's story. it's thought-provoking, even just wondering whether it's a real gun or not, does that make it any more or any less serious or is it all just in your head?

life is never just black and white, there is so much more and the hope is that this is what the series makes you think about.