Existence
Mixed Media (charcoal, watercolor, acrylic, twine)
15” x 22”
“Existence” touches base on the ideas of worth but takes it to a broader scale where one’s worth is non-existent if there was nothing of physical value to prove so. This mixed media piece revolves around the idea of being validated in one's existence. Throughout life without documentation people lack the ability to exist. For that reason people when born are given a birth certificate, those who get married have a wedding certificate, for graduating and getting a diploma, having a written time of death, etc. All these things without documentation show that if there was nothing left of a person of materialistic value, then they never existed in the first place. The validation is only found when people acknowledge an event with that person in it. The twine that goes throughout the piece acts as an umbilical cord of how life had started and the progression to how it ends. The charcoal bubble coming from the building engulfed the baby showing that the child is a product made of numbers (social security number) up until the time of death where it is written on a paper. Technically a person without any of these things ceases to be real.