Shruti Pathak

This work is a 4 x 4 inch cube created using 18 and 28 gauge brass wire, and 22 gauge copper wire. The insert was created by sewing a polyester plastic sheet, then painting over it with acrylic paint.

With this piece, I wanted to communicate the human experience. To sum it up in just four panels was a challenge, but I stripped it down to its bare essence: Logic, Emotion, Love, and the Five Senses. I portrayed these using continuous line drawings of symbols I assigned to them: a brain for Logic, a heart for Emotion, a kissing couple for Love, and a face for the Five Senses. The heart and brain are both vital organs and fitting symbols for the “emotion versus logic” debate, and complement love and the five senses respectively.

I was also inspired by work that I did previously which focused on my personal experiences, particularly my Integrative Seminar written pieces. These depicted my journey of accepting the experiences- even painful ones- that make life worth living. In Human Experience, I subverted my own and others’ nihilist and pessimistic perspectives of the world, while preserving relatability by packaging the experience of being alive as neutral, rather than strictly positive.