Conflict
MA diploma project, comprised of hand made books, postcards, scarves - screen print technique; painting - watercolor on paper; Ireland, 2018
Based on the idea of conflict, I wanted to create a contrast between a feeling of ‘enclosure’, artificiality of nature created by human society and a raw, unspoiled aspect of the environment. The nature’s essence and body is being exploited in order to support an anthropocentric world, very often being harmed and left helpless. However our society is working in a way that only a positive side is being revealed. The wilderness’ beauty and grandness that was very well captured in the Romantic age becomes nowadays something faint, mercantile, like endlessly multiplied postcards that only preserve a memory of the past.
Each aspect of nature was illustrated in two different ways, being mainly based on the idea of process. The large painting tries to capture a ‘romanticist’ way of looking at nature, being a work also influenced by natural elements such as weather or soil. The experience of outdoor painting could be the closest approach to understand and reach an insight of an authentic environment.
The merchandise work focuses on extensive processing, from changing the natural shapes through drawing and composition to digital modification, and lastly screen printing the image in order to multiply it. These steps to follow reveal how nature is being changed, corrected by human view and finally traded one way or another.
Nature versus man - the idea of preserving something that is slowly damaging, disappearing and becomes a smaller area which struggles to keep its rawness, is revealing the encounter between society, nature, and our own view on them. There is a shared feeling that strongly resonates with oneself inner conflicts and creates this bond between self and natural world.
