Hyacinthus Chooses The Monster

Hyacinthus Mesmerized, 2023, 14.5” x 11.5”

hand-stitched embroidery and punch needle with dmc thread.

“If we train young people to read insult, hostility, and prejudice into every interaction, they may increasingly see the world as hostile to them and fail to thrive in it.”. -- Helen Pluckrose 

Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity -- and Why This Harms Everybody. 

Hyacinthus Mesmerized is inspired by an Ancient Greek vase painting from the 5th century B.C. depicting the youth Hyacinthus with a Swan. The ancient Greeks asked questions about the nature of truth and what it means to be a good person, but this 21st-century Hyacinthus has much more to contend with. Here, he represents the youth who thinks he must sacrifice himself (his Self) for what he sees as a higher calling. Images within point to the pressures of identity and conformity, portrayed by a monster threatening to consume him, and surveillance cameras always watching how he performs. On each side of him is a partial pyramid representing the "hierarchy of oppression", halved to symbolize Hyacinthus' split psyche, which is cut off from the real beauty and truth of the world/Universe. The Swan symbolizes the profound mystery and elegance of his being  - his soul - here subjugated into his unconscious shadow. 

Ophelia and Narcissus

Ophelia And Narcissus, 2022, cotton embroidery floss on fabric, 10.5"x 14.5"

"The most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome." -

 George Orwell 

This tapestry brings together two iconic water scenes and characters: Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Narcissus from Greek mythology. Ophelia floats by, surrounded by discarded masks, as Narcissus checks out his latest selfie, with a book on Postmodernism on his lap. Two surveillance cameras point down at him, and he is oblivious not only to the presence of Ophelia, but also to the fact that he's being watched back by Big Tech/social media, the idea of "surveilled conformism".* A Linx creature, a stand-in for Echo, represents the abiding intelligence of nature, embodying the truth, beauty, and mystery outside of the constraints of human egoic identity stories. Supporting players include a field of Narcissus flowers, deer, muses, a full moon, Cyprus trees, and a night sky. l created this piece by combining hand stitching and punch needle techniques for the first time.

I interpreted the stories through a contemporary lens to examine some of the tensions and conflicts between ideology and reality happening in our current times. Here Narcissus represents a belief system informed by postmodernism and social constructionism, and in particular by gender ideology. Ophelia represents the biological reality of an adult human female impacted by that dead-end ideology, and the erasure of women as a sex category. The blood drops on her dress have a double meaning: both of her violent demise, and of the blood of menstruation, which is only specific to women, but in 2022 still needs to be said! 

* https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/everything-is-broken