The Sincerity Issue is a artwork commissioned by Sxema community for a Repeat electronic music festival.
The name explicitly reflects the message behind this piece.
The name explicitly reflects the message behind this piece.
The story behind it is quite personal:
I wanted to show a real angel-like person on the inside, who's wearing an aggressive mask made of metal which serves as symbolic armor against emotional threats, but at the same time hiding her true intentions against her will. When you protect yourself with such a mask, you inevitably start to lose the ability to express your true feelings and falling into some kind of "sleep". The masked person is sleeping until the moment when the light from nowhere crosses her eyelids and she immediately wakes up. This light might come from another person who's able to see something behind the mask and feel some bond on a deeper level. But in order to respond to such a signal, you have to remove any armor and become sincere and vulnerable.
I think a lot of people have this issue as I have it myself. Not because they are evil or anything, because they are afraid of getting hurt - I think that's why people unconsciously build a mask to hide in the shadow their true face, true meaning, and protect themselves from being vulnerable. Because sincerity and vulnerability usually go hand to hand.
The masked person doesn't have the courage to do that, so she rejects the light, lowers her eyes and returns to a state of emotional hibernation. It plunges her into a repeating cycle of missed signs and possibilities, and I call this cycle a Sincerity Issue. This has happened to me countless times, but it's part of the learning curve. So I thought that the best way to learn this lesson and start breaking this loop is to name this issue and capture your attention on it in a way that feels organic for you.
It was a transformative experience for me, and that's why this artwork saw the light.
It was a transformative experience for me, and that's why this artwork saw the light.
