Arcade Exhibition丨Black Dog and Me
Arcade Project Review; translated
Do you fantasize about escaping your current life? Run away as if someone is hunting you, but the hunter is yourself, and the hunter is in your heart wherever you run. When your mind is elsewhere, what you see is a world that has faded after being soaked in water, and you fall into the weightless ocean. He couldn’t help himself, but all the chaos was caused by his own hands. With the melancholy blue filter, you can’t see clearly around you, so you turn inward.
Siyun Sun first reshaped her self-perception through cognitive behavioral psychological counseling and presented the process of psychological integration in graphic novels. She has also extended her exploration of psychology and human social conditions, producing three-dimensional and multi-media works.
Your distorted thinking, psychological defense mechanisms, complex seeds planted in childhood, and personality traits are intertwined to form a you that is constantly flowing with energy in time and space. If you feel weightless and drowning, then you can try looking inward into your “mental ball of yarn” and become aware of blockages of strength. Art and words are soft assistants that light up your inner vision.
The exhibition works are distributed on the second and third floors, integrated with the arcade space. As a complex cultural space, the arcade aims to create a more relaxed and daily cultural atmosphere, allowing art to come from life and return to life.
The second floor is mainly composed of the artist’s large-format oil paintings and ceramic installations, which are contrasted with and differentiated from the bookshelves with smaller and denser color blocks on the second floor.
The third floor is used as a study room space, with more white space on the wall and more complete color blocks. On display are some of the artist’s original manuscripts, including watercolor painting, cyanotype, collage and other expression techniques.
A study room on the innermost side of the third floor was turned into a spatial interactive installation in this exhibition, breaking through the limitations of two-dimensional works through light and the three-dimensional composition of the work.
Lost at Sea of Mind Graphic Novel
This is Sun’s self-report on her growth process in cognitive behavioral therapy.
Psychological consultation combines cognitive behavioral, Gestalt, intentional and sociological therapies to guide her to talk, teach her to clarify her inner needs, implement exposure therapy, and gradually integrate into her current state and social identity. After obtaining 8 consultation recordings, Sun converted them into text and 300 multi-media illustrations, forming a graphic novel that is highly readable, instrumental and plot-oriented.
In addition to being related to neurotransmitter and hormone disorders in the body, mental illness is also affected by social environmental stress. Physiological disorders require medication, and personality and social pressures depend on how we view these pressures. Changing the way you look at things is at the heart of cognitive behavioral therapy.
From dependence to separation from counseling, and being able to conduct self-examination, Sun Siyun believes that there is no need to force optimism in life, but to seek balance, and truly observe the complicated life: whether it is tragedy or surprise, I like it or not, I accept it; I have no personal achievements or stability There is no need to forcefully convince yourself to achieve or suppress your feelings, but to accept this state of having nothing. Agree with it or not, this is my life. Mental health? Before commenting on whether you meet the “healthy personality” prescribed by society, you should understand yourself. In addition to solving the problem of anxiety or depression, psychological counseling is more about teaching me to understand. Fear makes us curious, sadness makes us think. The deeper the pain, the stronger the happiness. Crazy is a reasonable response to this crazy world, so I am mediocre or unique. In this crazy world, I don’t make judgments, I just feel and pursue.
Paintings and Installations
Psychoanalytic Jungle
2022. Oil on Canvas. 160 × 180 cm. Click title to view full piece.
I photoshopped photos of myself standing in a jungle into one piece and painted them as an allusion to my ego-superego-id state of mind. I keep a Jungle Law inside, disciplining myself.
Old Man on a Chair
Oil on Canvas. 120 × 90 cm.
Life drawing of an older man who kept switching his poses, so I montaged his positions into one painting.
Dynamic figures are gathered in a static space. While we do our best to expand our horizons, we are practicing grasping our subjective and objective understanding of ourselves and the world, and piecing together fragmented phenomena into a picture. Our cognition is fluid, so the self that grows out of it also changes with time and practice. We feel a stable portrait of ourselves only momentarily. We identify cognitive barriers, analyze and revise our thoughts through debate. 1. We are actions, and the classic way in which this action is represented as images is Cubism.
Family Narrative
Oil on Canvas. 200 × 80cm.
Carl Jung divided personality into dominant and inferior functions. In today’s society, focusing on developing one’s own advantageous functions can lead to shortcuts for survival. For example, an extrovert is very skillful in expanding his social circle. The person’s inferior function may be the failure to develop a long-term hobby, such as art. This suppressed inferior function, if channeled and released, can stimulate a person’s more survival skills and allow him or her to enjoy it.
For example, in Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT), treatment or psychological counseling usually starts with developing the client’s inferior functions, allowing the client to break his own limitations and rebuild confidence in his superior functions. How to develop weak functions? A familiar environment, such as family, can be an excellent practice setting for developing disadvantage skills because it is a place where we can expose our disadvantages and incorporate them into our lives. In the short term, it will not have a dramatic effect, but it will always grow gradually, and at the same time encourage the development of superior functions. I chose everyday items from my home to build a temple where I can go and retreat when I feel flustered and tired. Look inward, develop weak functions, and repair yourself.
Integrative Links
Charcoal, Pencil, Watercolour on Paper, Chain. 30cm × 54cm.
Behind the fused individual is the eternal attempt to tether the fragments of personality painstakingly together. This pull is reflected in the individual’s desire to loosen his own characteristics, allow them to develop outward, and explore the boundaries of the self; however, he is also afraid that excessive looseness may lead to schizophrenia or depression, which is under the current Foucauldian panoramic surveillance. Inadmissible out-of-bounds behavior. If it is too dry, a person will be overwhelmed by the isolation and helplessness caused by his specialness, as well as the forces that surround him and try to assimilate his specialness.
Lost at Sea of Mind Interactive Space
Size varied.
A three-dimensional interactive space in a weightless sea transforms one-dimensional text and two-dimensional images into an immersive four-dimensional space. In this space, you can see experiments on psychological mechanisms: projection, reflection, penetration, deformation of transparent materials and mirrors, and light dance.
The Corpse of a Nightmare
Ceramics, Ceramic Paint. 90 × 90 × 63 cm.
Take out the complexes that cannot be digested by yourself and stare at them under the light. Complexes are content that is difficult for the self to accept. They are suppressed by psychological defense mechanisms, but they will come out when stimulated. I built a high wall between me and the complex beast, objectifying it through gazing, thereby maintaining distance. There was no communication, and the beast and I maintained a stable state.
However, there are always some realities that bring us into contact and remind me of the existence of the beast beyond the wall. The ego is self-disciplined, but the complex beast does not obey the control of the white self. Therefore, it will create a lot of troubles in real life. For example, too many psychological edges lead to quarrels with others. The most typical complex is trauma. For example, a child who is abused by his mother suppresses the unbearable experience into the unconscious. Otherwise, he cannot survive, because it is difficult to let it stay in consciousness, and suppression is the most normal reaction.
Other similar emotions will also be absorbed: being scolded by others, almost being bitten by a dog, will overlap with previously suppressed emotions. Day by day, the complex gathered more and more power, becoming an incomprehensible fear. At this time, take the complex out of your heart, look at it, and then integrate it into yourself. At this time, the complex can stimulate vitality.
Opening Party
Siyun Sun 