Life paths by Celina Haroun

During the visual arts course, my pieces have revolved around the concepts of life paths, a theme underlying my spiritual and the intangible ideas, conveying that it is one of the strongest elements in a person’s fate & destiny. My idea for the exhibition has stemmed from my current stage at life, I am extremely close to a critical rite of passage in my journey of life, which is graduation. This made me ponder about where I stand in my life path. Most importantly, this realization gave me an insight into the power that I will hold in the determination of where this life path is headed. I perceive it as an interconnected, perplexing, never ending web, where each individual plays a significant role in their own way. Since the idea of life paths is deeply intangible, the exhibition aims to be introspective. Each audience member interpreting my paintings will be looking inside themselves, giving a chance for them to reflect on their choices, culture, surrounding world, has led them to land in the life path that they reside in.

A struggle I faced in developing my body of work was channeling the intangible underlying concepts of life paths. However, this was overcome by adopting an abstract approach to pieces that needed it. Such metaphorical pieces were done with a strong foundation from literature, such as “Flowing along”, that was inspired by the book of “lord of the flies”, as in the first chapter the island is presented as a typical beautiful island that is lush, beautiful and green. However after the introduction the contrasting elements of nature are introduced, the heat is unbearable, and the vines are snake like. The piece adopts that knowledge, in which, it is meant to depict nature in an unnatural way, using abstract and contrasting colors. This is done to convey the essence of paradox that is surrounding us all. Existence is even paradoxical, that it does not make rational sense. Nature makes sense but existence itself is irrational and, thus possibly supernatural.

Most of my pieces are exploding with a wide palette of different colors. The reason for this is to delve in the concepts in a way that is comprehensive for the audience’s understanding and involvement.

In “DEAR CUP”, the cultural perspective was deeply examined, in which 45 canvases are glued around the four sides of a wooden cube that resembles a Rubik’s cube. This piece was especially favored by me due to the strong personal connection it holds to my culture. The process of coffee cup reading is a physical concept that relates to life paths, thus a mixed media, consisting of canvases and a wooden cube was chosen to tackle the physical activity of coffee cup reading.

To show the journey of life paths, the exhibition will be in a circular shape. This allows the audience to personally connect with the pieces, and approach them from any angle they desire. This gives them the opportunity to be introspective, as the concept of life paths is intimate to each person and their inner and outside world. The 3 dimensional sculptures, including “dear cup”, & “Layered view”,” will be placed on the exhibition tables in that format, creating a sense of tactile engagement with the audience, by making them interact with the depth and shape of each of those pieces. Then the 2 dimensional pieces will be displayed to tackle the intangible concepts that include shapes. The exhibition will slowly transition into the purely abstract starting from “RATIO OF LIFE”, & “Flipped”. Then “Flowing along” will be placed in the center of the concave shape of the exhibition set up, due to its large scale (2 m x 60 cm), showing how the large amount of space will attract the eyes of the audience. After this, “Accidental Tranquility”, “Dive In”, “Zoom”, “Aura Episodes”,& “Circulation” will be the extremely abstract symbolism of concepts that the viewer will end their visit with. This will make the audience leave with ponder, as they start the exhibition thinking they know it all, and then leave wondering about the extent of their experience & knowledge.