Artist, The Wall in Our Heads
Split is the first word that comes to mind. The split that is echoed in numerous ways on the planet. And sometimes it goes to extremes, echoed in a concrete split. Literally, we build walls to symbolize that split. And why do splits happen? Human ego. We fear each other. The big issue—life and death. And before we know it, we are defining ourselves with a wall.
Physiologically, we are also split: our brains are split into a left lobe and a right lobe. What is the connection between the two? Some time ago, when people were diagnosed as heavily schizophrenic, doctors would cut the center between the two lobes. But that’s not the way to heal the problem.
Despite the evil that exists in the world, we are all connected. There’s a little bit of Hitler in all of us. It’s a challenge to accept that, but we have to accept him as part of humanity. The worst part, but part of humanity. The hope is that we are learning to negotiate this kind of split, this duality, which can come together as a oneness to make our energy. We are all connected. We are all made up of particles and molecules—the same as this paper and ink. And that realization takes the human ego out of it. When everything is just particles, that’s very humbling. We realize that our planet is one in the midst of billions in our galaxy, in the midst of billions of galaxies with billions of planets. So if these planets are just part of an infinite sea of particles, why do we so often get trapped into defending our little pieces of territory?
I used to write on the wall as part of my installations, “LEARNING TO BE FREE.” That’s what we are all doing: learning to dismantle the walls in our own heads. In Berlin, they said, ‘Take the Wall down so we can be free.’ Well, we continue to have new challenges—in the Middle East, Africa, and even within our own countries.
We are all still learning to be free.