Art Response Homework
2 min readApr 13, 2017
- In response to Shadow Puppetry, I find it interesting, not only as an intricate form of theater, but also as the style of choice for the earliest surviving animated feature film, Adventures of Prince Achmed. The intricacy of the puppetry and the mythological scale help to transcend the lack of expression presented by the silhouettes. In the case of Lula del Ray, the use of a real actor in silhouette gives the character more expression in terms of body language.
- The art piece, Gardens Speak, engages the viewer by making them a part of the exhibit, putting them not in the shoes of Syria’s victims, but in their graves. By doing so, the desensitization of continuous killing is stripped away by a deeply personal and unsettling encounter. Personally, I would absolutely attend Gardens Speak, as I could always use more empathy in my life.
- As to the broken watch, it reminds me of something I once read on the Japanese art of Kintsugi, which is a process by which craftsmen mend broken pottery. However, instead of trying to make the cracks invisible, they fill them with lacquer mixed with gold or silver dust, becoming more beautiful than before the breakage. The process has a sort of emotional resonance with how humans deal with trauma, in the sense that people often try to hide it, or ignore it, without acknowledging that it has changed them. Similar to the reassembled broken watch, the art of highlighting damage can be a lesson to people to embrace their own damage and how they will change because of it.
