​Artist Statement: Entelechy
-Potentiality has become an Actuality-
The contemporary western world can be adequately defined by the adage ‘knowledge is power’. Our society has become ever more dependant on progressive science and technology, particularly in the realm of medicine. A primary goal of advancing technological capabilities has been to unveil the many mysteries of the human body in efforts to decelerate or even reverse its natural course of deterioration. In many ways, these goals are being met and have resulted in new forms of healing, often leading to an extension of life.
However, when illness or disease permeates our lives, these advancements in science, technology, and medicine become seemingly incomplete. Even with volumes of medical information the most primal of questions, such as why? are too complicated and unanswerable even for science. Although such situations are outrightly defined by a state of confusion, eventually a new form of understanding can arise, one that is marked with an incredible reverence for the human body and spirit.
This series of work is comprised of diagrams of the body’s most vital organs cut into medical books. Each organ is intended to be like that of a contour map, becoming more and more discernible with each sequential layer. I choose to use medical books as a metaphor for the body; paper is also fragile and temporal in nature, while a book itself is an attempt to preserve something of importance.
These pieces acknowledge the lack of understanding that comes with disease as well as a reverence for life through idealized facsimiles of the body in a healthy state. The delicate, repetitive process of cutting and coloring the medical books is important in that it represents time as a necessary means for understanding something more fully. Just as a surgeon understands the innermost workings of the body with time and experience, a period of ailment for a patient can bring new meaning to existence. These close experiences with illness can bring a new significance to life.