THINKING BOX
22" x 35" mixed media sculpture / 2003
Artist Statement: The mind body gap... are we just a cell-created body in space, shaped entirely by the world we live in and the forces it exerts on us? Or do we each have our own unique will that projects outwards from within shaping the world around us? And at what point does that internal will end and the outside influence begin? Jean Paul Sartre had an answer for this: that our personality is made up of a sum of two factors: our facticity -- the influence we receive from setting that births and shapes us -- and our transcendence -- our own personal ideal of who we are and would like to be. Furthermore, it is solely up to us to decide which one we allow to govern our actions. To what point then, is our mind trapped in the box of our facticity, how much are we complicit in the creation of this box, and how much further are we guilty of the creation of this box around others?