Resistance of Geometrical Authority

Do you relate to that feeling of creating something that is important to you personally, but then seems too insignificant to share? Today I realised the resemblance between two works I never shared for that reason, one from 2018 and the other from 2020, and decided to do so anyway. 

The first work is called "Resistance of Geometrical Authority". It was the result of an assignment for which I had to make something out of an A4 paper within 15 minutes, pencil optional. Not feeling like either drawing, folding or tearing, I found this type of assignment frustrating, but working from that frustration provided a gateway to not trying too hard. As such I decided to knead the paper for the duration of the assignment. “I kept on kneading the paper until it got a fabric-like feel to it. I noticed how the fragility of the paper changed.”, I wrote in the journal I kept at the time.

Two years later I created "Childhood Aspiration", in reaction to a recurring memory. When I was a child I was given a set of coloured pens to draw with, and because I wanted to draw on a green paper while only white paper was available, I began to fill it in with the green pen. Before I could finish, the pens were taken away from me. The adult who had gifted them judged what I set out to do as wasteful, and told me that apparently it was a mistake to think that I was grown up enough to handle the pens. In a family in which art and design held importance, I experienced my creativity denied. Now, about 20 years later I bought the exact same kind of pen and I freed myself by completing the aspiration of creating a green paper.

These works share the formal quality of being an alteration of an A4 paper, and the title of the former work could have suited the latter. Both resist an authority, being it expectations (my own) regarding an assignment or expectations (my father's) regarding the drawing of a child. Both works have significantly affected my way of thinking and my behaviour; my personality. Where the experience in my childhood made me fearful of wasting something precious, the assignment I got to experience 18 years later signified the start of breaking away from carefully overthinking an action before (not) doing it. Though this trait is likely to remain a part of me, by finishing my monochrome drawing, I have given myself permission to diverge from it.

Resistance of Geometrical Authority, 2018, A4 paper, 21x15 cm

Childhood Aspiration, 2020, A4 printer paper and Stabilo 88/36 ink, 29,7x21 cm