Shining DESPAIR
Laurel Fulton
USA

Brooch “Variable function 1”
Silver, steel and acrylic, 40x75x10mm
Cast and fabricated

Brooch “Variable Function 2”
Silver, steel and acrylic, 80x40x10mm
Cast and fabricated

We experience the world in the only way we can, through and with our bodies. We receive and disseminate information with our bodies and then interpret it to create our ideas of the world. Each of us function differently and therefore our interpretations of our experiences vary greatly. These variances in our understanding of the world create tension, miscommunication and suffering. Human beings have difficulty stepping outside of one’s own body and seeing things through another’s eyes.

These brooches visually refer to what appear to be functioning systems or bodies. Funnels receiving input, tubes and pipes relaying one thing to another and receptacles containing some unnoted substance. Yet these small systems do not function but instead are small portraits of dysfunction and untenable parts referencing our inability to truly understand one another.

Although there is despair in our misunderstanding of one another there is also the beauty in the differences between us. Without this difference, without variation there is sameness and replication. Both of which do not allow for diversity of thought, expression of nonconformity. We all function differently.

More « Shining DESPAIR »

Shining Despair – Maria Konschake / Belgium

« Prägung » is part of the series « About Space and Identity » …

Shining Despair – Spam Glam / UK

Extreme changes in my life have caused me so much anguish …

Shining Despair – Eunhee Cho / South Korea

I have experienced two trials in my life.

Shining Despair – Jounghye Park / South Korea

The ‘Saves’ series is a collection created by layering and carving small pieces of silk fabric …

Shining Despair – Maud Traon/ UK

« This Mess We Are All In » was created in 2021, a year when the first aftermath of the long COVID period began to take hold…

Shining Despair – Katherine Mc Namara / Ireland

I have been saving the plastic packaging of my cigarette filters for several years.

Shining Despair – Aimee Howard-Clinger / USA

The western world can be defined by the adage ‘knowledge is power’.

Shining Despair – Eiko Nakahara / Japan

In the current state of the world, people hate each other and there are countries full of hatred.

Shining Despair – Donald Friedlich / USA

For most of us despair comes and goes.

Shining Despair – Anna Talbot / Norway

The series ‘Pressed Flowers’ is inspired by my memories of my grandfather’s garden from my childhood.