Dictionary Project | artportfolio

Purpose and Process

General process: To make this piece express emptiness and void-like characteristics, I had to use the tool of shading. My process was kind of unstructured and even erratic. Initially, I found an old dictionary to emulate the style of William Kentridge. Then, using inspiration from Kathe Kollwitz, I found words associated with the themes she used just by flipping through the dictionary. I attempted to create an accurate, evocative pictogram. It might not even be evident in my pieces. The words are immersed in the text. But the words are only as significant as I try to make them, embody them, in my representations. It’s kind of like a poem, where I’m trying to use as few words to describe the greatest emotion.

Tree

My process for this was the most erratic. I selected a page and randomly attempted to create a poem. It was inspired by my art teacher’s friend and my first girlfriends note. The only difference is that they had a set group of words to create a poem. I, on the other hand, randomly selected my words to create a poem.
This piece was the exception to my series. It was based on words and was immersed in a tree.
- The poem read:
  - Nature.
  - Having existence.
  - Unaffected. Unpretentious.
  - Regarded by man as subject matter
  - Opposed to the realm of imagination.
This was different from my series but overarchingly it covered similar themes of human greed and loss of imagination. It makes me wonder how the world would be, how green, if we had never lost our childhood imagination. Or innocence. I also attempted to make the poem incongruous with human behaviour. Trees are unpretentious, imaginative, life-giving, nurturing, nourishing. Additionally, I feel that great art starts off where nature ends. A tree is the greatest poem, Joyce Kilmer suggested. A poem created by God, causing its leafy arms to be constantly exalted to peacefully pray. This quote reflects how I feel: Trees are the poems that the earth writes upon the sky. We fell them and turn them into paper that we may record our emptiness. - Kahlil Gibran

Man

Process: I found “insane” in the dictionary. I then pulled out a few pages from the dictionary and formed an image across two separated pages. I did this so that I can portray him as disproportionate and disparate. I recreated it, however, this time on connected paper. It was to convey intense emotion and response.
For the Man, I only attempted to show deep pain. Its sole purpose was evocative sentiment. But the distortion shows the nature of man. How we’re split between ourselves. A battle amongst ourselves. We all have an internal battle that tears us apart and causes us grief.

Bowl

Process: Firstly, I had to find hope in the dictionary. I attempted to use shading to exhibit the greatest hollowness using a bowl. I especially tried to emphasise the gradient of the change in shade.
For me, it was as simple as an empty bowl or a hand with shackles. For a lot of my artwork, I tried to question and tackle axiomatic words, such as “hope”. Hope has a paradoxical fallacy to it. As much as people place faith in the word hope, hope can also be greatly paralleled with uncertainty. In fact, I asked A.k. what is the saddest word, and he came up with “hope”. So I portrayed hope as a hollowed bowl because hope is a selfish word was want and desire for a better human condition. People cling to a mere possibility.

Shackles

Process: I turned to the page with shackles, and then turned to drawing them. I initially wanted to tie it in with the bowl in that we all are tied down to false hope and it actually restricts us. I also tore this piece up to add to the chaffing nature of cuffs. Mr. Nicolas then cautioned me against it. Shackles was a two-part piece. This was a medieval torture device called stocks. This was a more personalised rendering symbolising that I too am tied down by certain worldly restrictions.
Picasso once said, “We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise truth”. For me though, art is the truth that helps us realise the lies. Continuing with this theme, I did a piece of shackles as well. I left the shackles open ended because the incarceration varies from person to person. In fact, these hypothetical shackles can also represent how everyone in society feels that they’re free, but they are confined and grounded. This mainly occurs due to people, money, or the past. The funny thing is that these restrictions can easily be thrown off. We just choose to leave them as a burden.

Joker

Process: This was a plain tribute to a character with unique views. It was easy to portray malice using charcoal and red pen. I used my fingers for a lot of the tints and shading.
I also did a depiction of the Joker. I did this because the character seems to have very interesting social commentaries, particularly on the true colours of people. A lot of his terrorism has motives to bring out the anarchy and pandemonium in society. A quote by The Joker embodies his philosophy really well: “ introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order and everything becomes chaos”. It is a powerful statement on the false security, like hope, that people blindly follow as though they were headless. This is because we all have a bit of madness in us, all it takes is a little push. This is because of the two-faced nature contrasting the face we show in society and the face we really are. Another quote of his states, “ give a man a mask and he’ll become his true self.

Guillotine

Process: For this piece, I found an existing pictogram in the dictionary that was in line with my theme. Then, I emulated it. This was one of my lesser pieces, particularly with regards to perspective. I did it in the end, but it took a lot of correction. This piece was more important because of its signification.
I also made a representation of a guillotine. A result of a guillotine is a headless body. Our head is what makes humans idiosyncratic and distinct. My main motive for that picture is a commentary on nonconformity and a creative life. My art is aims at conveying intense emotion. It is shown through my facial reactions and body language. My art is a response to things in this planet, but also, it is a way to experience the world; an expression of my imagination.

Relation to Culture

My previous piece was solely inspirited by Kathe Kollwitz. My next piece is a combination of William Kentridge and Kathe Kollwitz’ approach to their artwork. My themes and medium were similar to Kentridge and Kollwitz’s. Suffering. Pain. Fallacies. All represented using charcoal. Charcoal because its a result of ruin. It’s rough and is paralleled with the intention of my work. I have experienced living in both India and Kenya, and suffering is ubiquitous. The gap between the rich and the poor is progressively large. I hope to remind society that there are people living in those conditions. They often forget, or write it up to a little charity work. That’s not enough. We cannot just absolve our help, our obligation, to society with an act that has almost no impact on you.

William Kentridge

William Kentridge has manifest interests in tests. His works also incorporate words as a focus. It was also very intriguing that he embedded them in a tree, similar to what I did without knowing this. He used allegories to comment on the political situation in South Africa during the Apartheid. He is a very expressionistic artist. A lot of his works’ epicentre is not the art itself but the interpretation. This, also is very similar to mine.

Kathe Kollwitz

As evident, Kathe Kollwitz has exaggerated the hollowness of the eyes and the depth of the bowls. Her themes are also centred around the suffering of humans, particularly children. Kathe Kollwitz's imagery is marked by poverty-stricken, sickly women and children who are barely able to care for or nourish their children. Kollwitz's art displays compassion as she makes appeals on behalf of the working poor, the suffering and the sick. Her work serves to questions the social conditions in German.