Incubation

100 × 120 cm / Mixed media on canvas

€2,000

Incubation seals the silent, deep-rooted resistance that the individual sustains against the heavy pressure of social norms, drilled-in identities and the outside world. The figure, turned away from the viewer, represents the resolve to reject the masks presented to the outside world and to turn towards one’s own existential centre. The cold blue wings covering the figure’s back do not symbolise a soul that has just broken free and taken flight, but a heavy, rigid, insulating shield built to protect against the world. “I wrapped myself in this shell not to fly, but to build an insurmountable wall between myself and the world. I did not run away; I simply withdrew into my own darkness.” The deep burgundy and blood-red texture of the background carries the stifled pangs of the soul just before it hardens into a shell, along with its inner conflict and its potential, ready to erupt. The unseen face is a reaction to the loss of identity created by social norms. The red hair, meanwhile, is the first spark of the inner fire kept alive beneath the shell. The second work in the series, Incubation, follows Metamorphosis: Self-Creation. The withdrawal into a protective shell and the potential kept alive within carry forward a narrative that reaches towards the awakening to be explored in the third work.