Free art piece idea #27
This one is called “my son will die one day”.
This piece is meant to represent potentially in-experienceable, and hence hypothetical, grief. This is grief we can only imagine and, hopefully, never experience. Yet, the pain and sadness triggered by the mere idea of the future death of one’s children and grandchildren is real.
The piece challenges the feelings that the factual “arrow of time” might have left us with. The “arrow of time” explains that time moves in one direction and that what happens in the universe cannot “unhappen”. In other words, no event can be reversed. This underlies the fact that we are, factually, older than our children and that the odds of them outliving us are higher than the alternative.
The other aim of this piece is to take a stab at the deep seated illusory perception of our immortality. For all the talk and writing we have about contemplating our own death, the grasping we have of it is highly intellectual. Projecting oneself into the future by thinking “in 7000 years, no one will remember me” is a much more reliable way to rekindle the factual reality of the upcoming end of our existence. This piece aims to do the same by helping the audience contemplate the death of their descendants.
“Less is more” is the recommendation here. One such piece should be enough to trigger this feeling for viewers. However the author is free to go against that principle and fill a gallery with dozens or hundreds of such affirmations on the walls.
