The Weight of Souls - Grocery bags

Printable fabric and resin
~28'' (H) x ~15'' (W) x ~5'' (D)
2020

In this ongoing series "21 Grams- Grocery Bag", I interview and photograph the artists who had left their previous jobs/professions to be an artist. I intend to create an exhaustive catalog of the faces and untold stories of the middle class, especially those who had battled between a lucrative income and the pursuit of their dreams. Grocery bags are the metaphor for commodities and also the carriers of commodities. This series aims to reflect the internal struggles they encountered throughout their transition, the life experiences of being artists in our modern era, the landscape of the human condition, and the concept of existentialism in late stage capitalism. I digitally print the portraits onto pieces of fabric and make photo-sculptures from them. The non-traditional approach of combining digital photography with the softness and mesh-like texture of fabric creates a novel visual language that represents this distorted society and tangled mind.

Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, once said in his book Wealth of Nations: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” However, nowadays, people are enslaved by a profit-driven society, rat-race competition, consumerism, and the downside of socioeconomic inequality. Working for self-fulfillment has become a privilege for most people, and this pandemic only makes the discrepancy larger. With this project, I start a dialog and respond to the questions that have always haunted me: What pushes us away from pursuing our dreams? What is the American dream we believe in now? What should we sacrifice to live a good life? What is a good life?