KET DOVES

9 - 18 September 2022 @ CCAS MANUKA

Artist Statement:

We can't communicate. I can't communicate.

We have long been living in a pandemic. We are crying for help we do not want to receive, screaming into voids of Schrodinger's friends and literally destroying ourselves on a digital stage for anyone willing to tune in. We are watching silent films of our own suffering, and following the stories through memetic subtitles we can digest.

And we are all engaging. We gladly consume the abstracted pain and respond with 'same.'

Memes are now well established systems of communication. Thousands from every socioeconomic demographic participate in them every day to read news and share experiences in entertaining bite sized pieces. Many also do so to express pain that is too terrible for us to give words, where we might otherwise be marginalised, or when our disabilities have rendered communication too difficult.

For those of us too tired to risk vulnerability in a world in which our self worth is constantly under fire, and those of us whose attempts to be vulnerable only scarred us further, memes stand in as an easier system to communicate and connect.

Image: Ket Doves, htph, 2022, oil on canvas, 40 x 45cm