Human beings are made to believe that the purpose of ones life is consumption, production, reproduction and power(which is established through money, social connections and force). Through society’s reinforcement of these beliefs, we maintain the world’s highest form of fiction - the economy:
This mysterious glue is made of stories, not genes. We cooperate effectively with strangers because we believe in things like gods, nations, money and human rights. Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money and no human rights—except in the common imagination of human beings. You can never convince a chimpanzee to give you a banana by promising him that after he dies, he will get limitless bananas in chimpanzee Heaven. Only Sapiens can believe such stories. This is why we rule the world, and chimpanzees are locked up in zoos and research laboratories.Yuval Noah Harari
The Other Side Of Dual Reality depicts art ( music, visual arts, fashion, literacy ) and technology as tools of social engineering. The project aims to dismantle the illusions and ideologies within everyday life for the purpose of seeking truth and accumulating power through knowledge to transform our surroundings and resolve issues embedded in our culture for more than 12 thousand years. By analysing current trends and themes in popular art, presenting historical and contemporary information, this project aims to showcase the dual reality human beings have created and its effects on society.
& at a private residency (see images bellow)
Experience Junkies | 2019
Calligraphy in silver markers on black paper
silver frame: 40.64 x 30.48 cm
Experience junkies depicts our constant need for experiences, as we get very easily bored, we are exhausted from overworking ourselves and alienated by technology and media. If we do not constantly experience high levels of stimuli, human beings become unhappy. We are not meant to experience constant stimulation, it is a result of our enhanced modern society.
Source of Unhappiness | 2019
Calligraphy in silver markers on black paper
silver frame: 40.64 x 30.48 cm
This piece in combination with Experience Junkies presents the 8 modern reasons of unhappiness derived from Bertrand Rusell’s book The Conquest for Happiness. Russel argues that our main sources of unhappiness are: Meaninglessness, competition, boredom, fatigue, envy, guilt and shame, persecution
Tower of Babel | 2019
Red acrylic | White Acrylic | Black ink |
Red ink | calligraphy on canvas
Canvas | 90 x 60 cm
Scripts
The scripts within the piece are Glagoljica, the oldest form of Slavic script found in Croatia,dating to the 9th century. The second script is Hebrew, the third one Arabic and the central one being Old English, urging the spectator to pursue truth and carefully consume content around him/her.Each script depicts the myth in its own language, although it is the same story.
The Tower of Babel is a myth found in majority of ancient and modern religions. The myth says that humans were building a tower to heaven and at the time there was only one language and script. God got angry at humans for doing so and broke the language and writing system into many others, as well as scattered society around the world.This myth applies to us more today than it did in history, as our inventions are damaging nature, which will collapse beneath us if we continueto abuse our own power.
We are less capable of understanding each other today, as technology and globalisation are disrupting our daily lives. In order to maintain sanity and the planet, we must try to understand each other and re-define the way we use our own inventions.
Empathy | 2019
Caligrafitti in silver markers on black paper
black frame: 40.64 x 30.48 cm
One of the results of living in a society which emphasises the importance of ownership, production, reproduction, consumption and power is the global mental illness epidemic. The increased use of technology and comparisons of ourselves to each other, addiction, miscommunication, alienation, lower empathy levels and constant necessity for experience has made us all far more miserable than the previous generations.
Exploit 4 the economy | 2019
Calligraphy in silver markers on black paper
black frame: 40.64 x 30.48 cm
This piece points out how we have created inequality and primarily exploited our own for the purpose of maintaining the economy. We all might come from different countries, backgrounds, cultures, but the only thing in the world that everyone collectively believes in is the economy to which we all bend our lives.
It is not only the workers from third world countries or modern slavery that subjects to exploitation. It is also the creatives and workers in Western countries whose skills are exploited for minimum wages. I hope we can all start from ourselves and then others to decrease the number of exploitation for the economy.
Communication | 2019
Abstract calligraphy | White and black acrylic |
silver spray | black ink | calligraphy on canvas
canvas 60 x 50 cm
Miscommunication | 2019
Abstract Calligraphy
White and black acrylic | silver ink and
spray | black ink | calligraphy on canvas
canvas 60 x 50 cm
I believe that one of the greatest disruptions our society is miscommunication, which is increasing through the disruption of technology and globalisation. The piece with Miscommunication represents the miscommunication of the east and the west. The calligraphic abstractions are a combination of the western Fractura and Aarabic script.
Consumed by consumption | 2019
Calligraphy in silver markers on black paper
Black frame: Black frame with
silver and gold ink
frame: 40.64 x 30.48 cm
Consumed by consumption presents one of the values respected in our society and promoted through art, media and technology - consumption. Our society has reached a point in history where our massive amount of consumption is not only damaging the environment, but also our mental health as we use it as a source of dopamine to makes us “happy” for a short period of time. This comes from the idea of ownership, and that owning more makes us more valuable, while it maintains a vicious cycle of mass production.
Consume | Produce | Reproduce | 2019
Caligrafitti in silver markers on black paper
silver frame: 40.64 x 30.48 cm
Consume, Produce and Reproduce is primarily based on our repetitive habits of overconsumption and overproduction which maintain a vicious economic cycle resulting in overworking, environmental crisis and a homogenous landscape of unnecessary products. The need for these products is the implementation of desire, communicated through art. While we reproduce, the consumption and production increase as there is a higher demand for products through the increase of global population.
Luxurious Poison | 2019
Silver marker | Black acrylic |
Calligraphy on canvas
20 x 25 cm
In order to cope with the reality we created many individuals resort to the legal drug: alcohol. At the same time this opiate is glorified in popular media, thus creating the image that drinking expensive beverages makes us more worthy than others.
Born to Die | 2019
Red acrylic | Silver marker |
Black acrylic | Calligraphy on canvas
20 x 25 cm
Born to die is presented with a QR code that takes the spectator to the article to the amount of animals we kill on a daily basis: almost 3 billion. Our necessity for consumption has resulted in daily slaughter and breading of life only to be killed afterwords to maintain consumption, satisfy our needs and maintain the economy. What is far more obscure is the presentation of the desire to consume more animal products through media and advertising, where animals are depicted as “happy”.
Bank | 2019
Black ink | red acrylic |
Calligraphy on canvas
20 x 25 cm
This piece depicts the advertising campaign used by a bank that supported South American drug cartels and terrorist organisations. The same bank is using colour, community and national symbolism to gain more clients within the UK.
She Can't Be Owned | 2019
Black ink | silver spray |
Calligraphy on canvas
20 x 25 cm
If we examine popular music, many women are sexualised or depicted as submissive to men.
Usually this comes from fear of women that can stand their own ground.
Natural Beauty | 2019
photographic print on canvas |
abstract calligraphy | white acrylic
black ink | silver marker
81 x 101 cm
Universal Beauty | 2019
photographic print on canvas | white
acrylic | black ink | silver marker
81 x 101 cm
Universal / Natural beauty are photo manipulations of Munich landscapes, arguing that the highest form of beauty - is natural beauty. If we place a group of people from different cultures and backgrounds in front of a person, they would never agree that the person is beautiful, because everyone has a different perception of reality. If we would place the same group of people in front of mountains and oceans, they would all agree that it is in fact - beautiful.