Here is a text to help understand the exhibition and the philosophy behind it.
In 1920, two young girls living with a wolf were found in a small village in India. It is known that the two girls who lived like wild animals in the jungle, thoroughly isolated from society, acted like beasts. They were eventually saved and given rudimentary education to adapt to the new environment. But, it was not easy to make them members of the community. One of the girls died shortly after she was discovered, and the other girl mysteriously died after nine years without reason. It is presumed some determinant elements formed in their subconscious while living with the wolf were a grave burden that clashed with civilized reality.
Most people facing a new environment try to compromise with the reality to adapt themselves to the new and unfamiliar. If one tries to keep their inner self, they will be confined on an isolated island. Mowgli syndrome is a term applied to those who depart from reality and lose their identity, becoming trapped between the worlds of humanity and animal. Feeling uneasy in a community, they try to hide themselves or commit incomprehensible acts. Only a few people suffer from this syndrome, but those who do suffer greatly. People usually distinguish familiar scenes from the unreal by building a high wall between the conscious and unconscious. Those who cannot distinguish the two worlds are diagnosed and cured. I consider myself an agent healing, and try to look for proper treatments.
The first treatment is to stimulate a monolog. Utterances made, following the stream of thought, account for each symptom as it is. Narratives from the inside and outside are naturally linked like putting together a puzzle. The second treatment is a walk. After walking along a mountain path, I enter a deep forest unconsciously. As my trail disappears in the shadows cast by densely growing trees and fragmented skies, I recognize where I am. My directionless walking leads me to an ideal place in my subconscious. The last treatment is balance. A struggle to maintain a balance between two different drives generates afterimages. An ideal state is when the conscious and the subconscious are in a balance. If one is lopsided, one will deny themselves due to a sense of psychological emptiness. The subconscious has to hide under the conscious, and the conscious has to accompany the shadow of the subconscious. When I am awake, I agonize in the boundaries of the two worlds, simultaneously creating dreams. The interior and exterior of the conscious become blurred when numerous images are linked. I intend to capture images evoked from the observation of myself.
The first treatment is to stimulate a monolog. Utterances made, following the stream of thought, account for each symptom as it is. Narratives from the inside and outside are naturally linked like putting together a puzzle. The second treatment is a walk. After walking along a mountain path, I enter a deep forest unconsciously.
As my trail disappears in the shadows cast by densely growing trees and fragmented skies, I recognize where I am. My directionless walking leads me to an ideal place in my subconscious. The last treatment is balance. A struggle to maintain a balance between two different drives generates afterimages. An ideal state is when the conscious and the subconscious are in a balance. If one is lopsided, one will deny themselves due to a sense of psychological emptiness. The subconscious has to hide under the conscious, and the conscious has to accompany the shadow of the subconscious. When I am awake, I agonize in the boundaries of the two worlds, simultaneously creating dreams. The interior and exterior of the conscious become blurred when numerous images are linked. I intend to capture images evoked from the observation of myself.
I sometimes look into a mirror to confirm the effect of treatment. But, the black mirror reflecting nothing tries to swallow me like an unfathomable cave. I experiment with other remedies, and record the results. I am trying to cure a terminal illness. Like a protagonist in a film, I am probably confined to the imaginary environment I have designed and become more seriously sick, denying reality.
Mowgli syndrome is a term used by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty in her 1995 book Other Peoples’ Myths: The Cave of Echoes to describe mythological figures who succeed in bridging the animal and human worlds to become one with nature, a human animal, only to become trapped between the two worlds, not completely animal yet not entirely human. – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Meet on the Three Way Junction”, pigment on paper, 162 x 130 cm, 2009
“A Boy Wishing to Get In”, pigment on paper, 155 x 147 cm, 2009
