The Fold of Reason and Sensation
59.1 × 59.1× 51.2 in
Wood, yarn and colorpencil on tracing paper.
Inspired by Hermann Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund, this installation embodies the contours of my own body, serving as vessel for the entwined journeys of reason and sensation, discipline and desire. Scenes from the novel are interpreted in color pencil on translucent vellum. Blue and red threads weave through them, tracing tension and reconciliation between two ways of being.
Blue marks Narcissus’s monastic path—episodes cluster in the head, a mental state is shaped by thought and restraint. (Yet, its still surface ripples, stirred by Narcissus’s appearance.) Red embodies Goldmund’s sensuous pilgrimage, coursing through throat, heart, chest, and lower torso—where love, art, violence, and mortality make their abode. The farther these vignettes are from the head, the nearer they come to the beating pulse of life.
At the front, l draw the final scene: Goldmund's death in Narcissus's arms, a Pietà-like image. Behind them, an open book hovers. In the cradle of my two hands—sensation and reason, body and mind—finally converge into one woven self, the “Book of Life”.