Ulli Walker / Circles
Everything is Perfect: Exercises in Mortality
Mortality is the human condition. We know that this is true, and yet we don’t realize this truth until something fatal actually comes upon us. We are all gong to die. Everything around us is always coming into being and passing away: cells, living beings, events, memories, the weather, galaxies—everything. Since my cancer diagnosis I have realized that I am part of this inescapable process through which life lives itself.
Death is now folded into my life, where it has always been, and I have been exploring ways to express the realization that what I think of as my self is dissolving and passing away.
I have taken the circle as my main motif and metaphor because it has the capacity to represent life and death at all levels, from the cosmic scale of stars and planets to the microcosmic scale of cells and atomic particles. The circle is also a symbol of perfection and completion, a signifier of an all-encompassing universe that embraces everything, including death. From this vantage point life is perfect in the way it lives itself, even though it means we die in the process.
Ulrike Walker
Mortality is the human condition. We know that this is true, and yet we don’t realize this truth until something fatal actually comes upon us. We are all gong to die. Everything around us is always coming into being and passing away: cells, living beings, events, memories, the weather, galaxies—everything. Since my cancer diagnosis I have realized that I am part of this inescapable process through which life lives itself.
Death is now folded into my life, where it has always been, and I have been exploring ways to express the realization that what I think of as my self is dissolving and passing away.
I have taken the circle as my main motif and metaphor because it has the capacity to represent life and death at all levels, from the cosmic scale of stars and planets to the microcosmic scale of cells and atomic particles. The circle is also a symbol of perfection and completion, a signifier of an all-encompassing universe that embraces everything, including death. From this vantage point life is perfect in the way it lives itself, even though it means we die in the process.
Ulrike Walker
|
|