Justina Yu

Through the Forest

Fall 2020. Life Studies

““Through the Forest” is a physical manifestation of my experiences with synesthesia. Synesthesia is a neurological condition where the brain is cross-wired; one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to an involuntary response in another pathway. In the words of Myrto I. Mylopoulos and Tony Ro in their article, Synesthesia: a colorful word with a touching sound? “a synesthete may perceive tastes when seeing certain shapes or might perceive colors when seeing achromatic letters.” Personally, I experience four variations of synesthesia- personality-colour synesthesia, emotion-colour synesthesia, chromesthesia, and spatial sequence synesthesia. These variations cause me to associate people, emotions, and sounds with colour, and allows me to see time and abstract ideas arranged in space. Through my piece, I have chosen to map out the ways in which my brain sees these ideas, events, and emotions throughout my life, and take viewers through the “forest” that is my brain. I wanted to use synesthesia as my uncharted territory in order to express a part of myself that is rarely understood, as well as to educate and show the world how differently everyone thinks. The painting on the surface of the wood panel is the same as my first draft- it is the way I see my life’s timeline, as well as emotion for as long as I could remember. I chose bright, vibrant colours in order to create more contrast and to make my piece more expressive and accurate to what I see in my “mind’s eye.” The current- like dashes of paint represent my memories arranged by my synesthesia, and serve as a base for the sculptural elements. For the sculptural component, I created larger “islands” out of clay to symbolize major events or memories. Then, I used smaller, more delicately hand-crafted pieces, arranged around the larger islands, to symbolize emotions and less significant ideas/memories. These pieces are arranged like trees in order to show their pathway through time, space, and also to symbolize the connection between certain emotions and events. I chose wooden dowels and skewers as the support for the islands and the tree-like structures and left them in their original colour in order to match the panel and hopefully to ground the piece. The wires twisted around the poles and small wire structures symbolize the neurological aspect of my sculpture and connect all the small pieces. In addition to reflection, I also listened to a very specific playlist during the creation process. Like contemporary painter Melissa McCracken, music causes me to see specific colours and I chose to use music in order to emphasize and push the emotion, movement, and colour in my piece.”