Journey of a Hero : Jedi Edition

In Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, every hero requires to go to a journey which its path is formulaic. Put it simply a HERO heeds to a call for an adventure, having a supernatural aide or mentor, initiation by trials and adventures, victory, and return.

Joseph Campbell

So let me introduce heroes named Elise, Silas, Aiman, Andrea and Sabrina. They are heroes on a journey and will be going unto one after this exhibition. Their journey - finding their voice aided by various mentors, their trials by fires and adventures of finding their identity through paints, brushes, canvas, grades, CGPA and most importantly reached to a stage – where they have to exhibit all of this – in this exhibition.

The Journey

Their unknown journey took 3 years, just like Frodo and the Fellowship, they need to complete tasks semester by semester. This is their final semester and they required to organize, manage, setting up, display their works, publish a catalog, dealing with more people, inviting who’s who to come and so-on and at the same time, finishing up their works. Phew.

Not easy.

The exhibition is showing to the people what they are made of.  The most important audience in this exhibit are their parents. They are the one who paid the bills, feed their growing ( ever hungry ) heroes and most importantly gave their blessings and respect their child ( hero ) decision who wants to go to an unknown/uncharted territory called Fine Arts.

Most took accounting, mechanical, doctors, dental and electrical engineering majors. Any arts related field took a backseat. The left brain dominates the right. It’s all issues about being practical, economical and quantitative. Anything that is grey, dealing with emotional, the qualitative subjective ones is left behind.

At first glance, all these works may look difficult to decipher or to understand. But what is brilliant is – they don’t LIE, pretending or imitating to be another Van Gogh or David Hockney. All these images you see here are the result of never-ending process which they took for 3 years. All the days, all those hours - spent in the studio, on drawings, battling with those brushes, canvas and paints is a challenge – mentally and physically. 

The Image

You must be figuring out why Silas’s figures is strange, it’s like Finn from Adventure Time on an acid trip.  A figure came out from within. It’s not another monster, that is Silas himself, and he finally for the first time came out from his make-shift shell.

geMEni

Silas and his alter-ego

Aiman’s finally brought down his walls and now prepared to join with the rest – most importantly, for the first time being comfortable of being Aiman himself.  Sabrina took so many paths and found herself finally in layers of geometric abstraction and interconnected lines. She finally able to find a song where she can dance to.

Aiman and Aiman

Sabrina's geometrical playground.

Andrea’s journey consists of longing, wandering and floating in and out alone. Her strong religious faith keeps her grounded. Elise doesn’t wander but she longs for an anchor, a hero. She put some serious work in searching, reflecting the role and contributions of fathers. Remember to read the letters. Its brilliant.

Andrea's mindscape

Elise's Father series.

The Return and Victory

All the years I heard people and artist’s complaint – said they don’t know how to appreciate  nor understand the arts. Don’t worry - art itself very subjective. The way how we dress, bring ourselves to the public, arranging your interiors itself is art. We cant take out ART from LIFE. It's part of LIFE. Art is not specifically must be presented on a canvas or in a gallery. God gave us 365 versions of Monet without fail.

So what we have here in this exhibition are the results of 5 heroes who went through separate and different battles and most importantly came back with something. Like Frodo, who half - dead due to the terrible ordeal of throwing the ONE ring, here heroes named Elise, Andrea, Silas, Sabrina and Aiman who 3 years ago doesn’t have any VOICE but have an intention to go an unknown journey,

NOW they look back at the pieces they produced TODAY and said to everyone – “I survived in this college for the past 3 years and what I’m showing here is ME and this is MY VOICE.

The moment you find your voice - that is victory.

I bet the other lecturers are glad to assist you in your journey, they did a remarkable job. Me too.

May The Force Be With You. 

from left - Sabrina, Elise, Andrea,Aiman and Silas.

Anderson Ee guest lectures in TOA Academy. He consults,writes, produces and directs short film and documentaries.