The polarity between the sensational and the mundane is also the dichotomy between the sensational and the sensory in which the latter is left unmarked, unvoiced and unattended to, as a banal element of the everyday.
was watching a TED Talk about The Art of the Interview and something interesting was said, "people don't get their portraits painted anymore," and how true. because i guess to a certain extent, photography makes it more convenient to capture one's portrait now. i'm not demeaning the value of portrait photography, but drawn/painted portraits are certainly something to 'wow' over.
it is not easy to capture someone, as photos or paintings, and make it look like them, and yet, not. because to a certain extent, portraits do not necessarily capture the person, but more of his or her persona. a fragment of who they are, their inner states of mind. the emotion that they're emoting. the translated thought. the conditions. a non-face. a permutation. essentially, what makes a portrait powerful is what it says. the face is a canvas to the greater conversations between cosmos.
the disembodied genius. the idea that our creative processes involve an other-ly intervention or contribution. that it is not fully our own. that we do not own it. that it comes from nowhere and everywhere. and would leave when the work is done. to be passed on to another. for another creation to be manifested. across time and space.
i've always believed in the idea of the cosmos and how inspirations, ideas, dreams, aspirations, and messages of the many exist within it. released. let loose. or sometimes lost. and i believe in the presence of the divine who artfully crafts opportune chances for the meeting between these floating specters and their medium, the artist. a collaboration, as Gilbert beautifully puts it. collaborations that can happen anytime. anywhere.
interestingly, i find my meetings with such specters mostly contained within the four walls of the toilet. restroom. bathroom. pee-pee place. whatever it is called. i never linger long in the loo. for good reason. but i would be in the midst of sorting out laundry for the week when, POOF! in the middle of a shower. POOF! in the middle of the blessed* act of shitting. POOF!
*i consider shitting a blessing as i believe the human body would not be able to contain itself had it not been given an outlet for release. as the saying goes, what goes in, must come out. so that more can come in. again. and out. again.*
hence, i consider myself lucky for being chosen for collaborations without having to wait it out for centuries in that one space. waiting to be hit by the apple in the head. or having to travel to the end and back. but then again, i have been told that some of my ideas are crappy. shitty. but i suppose, it's better to be crafted as a vessel than a plastic plateau that simply allows for everything or anything that wants to latch on, be wiped away. the important thing is, to become. to become a vessel for something. anything. and then to act with it. accordingly. poetically.
nuruL H. is in the midst of peeling the psychotic postgraduate from her pensive photographer persona. the former has however, greatly influenced the conceptual and contextual makings of the photos concocted by the photographer. she illuminates aspects of the liminal, intangible, and the unvoiced as mouths and methods of telling stories about the everyday. each piece, a biographical account of something or someone. and as the power of the unvoiced lies in its visual presence, it is here this textual bio ends.
