“Ningen”

August, 2021

I used black to represent contemporary ideas of what a human being is. The colour is definitive, unambiguous, not open to interpretation, no matter from which angle or perspective it is viewed. I represented it in a box that I measured and ruled precisely, as a way of depicting a kind of man-made notion of perfection. I then painted over it with a Zen Buddhist ensō, which represents the inherent perfection within that which is imperfect. I used gold for this to convey purity in this philosophy.