Jade Youn

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For this project, overwhelming amounts of thoughts and concerns are the main conceptual theme of my work. In Buddhism, the human inner self is understood to hold the innate potential for enlightenment, yet it also suffers from desire, attachment, and the pain they create. In my case, I often find myself burdened by excessive, trivial, and unnecessary worries. When these thoughts begin to overwhelm me, no matter how desperately I try to stop them, I end up thinking about the thought itself, creating thought after thought in an endless loop. In Buddhism, the 108-bead mala is used as a symbolic object that represents these delusions and mental afflictions. On the right side of my work, I visualize this mala as wrapping around my entire body—an image that represents how these thoughts entangle me and trap me in a cycle that feels almost impossible to escape. Because of these mala veiling my sight, I cannot see my inner strength and positive energy clearly. My potential appears only faintly, as if viewed through a hazy, semi-transparent film placed between myself and who I truly am. The 108-bead mala thus becomes a barrier that obscures my clarity and keeps my innate possibilities just out of reach. On the left side, by drawing my self-portrait in green hues, I sought to reveal the clear, mystical energy of positive potential. To indicate the blurry sight, I added a semitransparent sheet. By etching the sheet and adding physical beads on it, I intended a direct connection to the black and white drawing.