(artwork example)
Yupha Mahamart
title: r rest ed
technique: alternative prints & found object
year: 2023
r rest ed is a homographic play on language, resonating with the notion of what remains defeated, residual fragments left behind. It evokes the lingering atmosphere of dampness, mold, parasites, and grime: traces suspended like particulate matter, arrested yet still diffused within an interior state of deprivation, resentment, and psychological suffocation.
I repeatedly question the irregularities embedded within decision-making processes, both those that are publicly visible and those that remain silent and concealed. One is compelled to constantly observe the shifting positions of all parties involved. When confrontation becomes unavoidable, it is directed toward opaque mechanisms and concealed agendas that offer no genuine recourse, only friction points along a precarious path toward a faint light at the end of the tunnel, a distant promise of equality and the rule of law.
"Even though the law judges 'right' or 'wrong' and stands in opposition to aesthetics, it challenges the fusion of relationships in seemingly impossible ways, making it possible"
This body of work employs metaphor to articulate a condition of irresolution of being trapped within an inescapable impasse. The tension is articulated through photo-etching printmaking processes and hand-assembled imagery, marked by a posture of stillness that resembles reluctant submission to systems of power. Beneath this surface calm, however, lies an inner turbulence of fear and anxiety born of dissent, of refusal to accept the restriction of intellectual freedom.
The work emerges from lived experience: being rendered “at fault” within an academic institution; becoming a victim of collective persecution by administrative elites through juridical instruments of lawfare; and ultimately being subjected to compounded accusations culminating in SLAPP litigation (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation).
