In Barthes’ The Death of the Author (1977), he closes his critical analysis with the line, ‘... the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author’.[1] He claims that once a writer publishes their work, the author should no longer try to control its interpretation as it is up to the reader to create meaning. Continuing with Barthes’ thoughts, the connection between the author/artist and the writing/artwork becomes stronger day by day but their connection will only last until the writing/artwork is separated from the author/artist. This necessitate as that the writing/artwork has to be shown alone to the reader/viewer. From here, it is no longer about the author/artist anymore, but the writing/artwork’s becoming in relation to various readers/viewers. Following on from Bergson’s statement about his concept of pure duration, in my artwork there are various tenses intertwined with each other. I aim to freeze the organic material in Not Really Really (17-SS-4), in order to invite the audience into an encounter with the thing’s duration that hopes to generate unsuspected becomings.       

When I present the artwork in the gallery, I am taking care of the artwork. My identity is excavated in service of the artwork and the artwork’s self-presence, which is intermingled with the audience’s interpretations, becomes the meaning of the work. As a subject and author, I cannot exist outside of the social conditions and concerns within which I am cultivated. Therefore, I mediate the artistic language that I have inherited through my concerns but then after the process of making, I hold back my personal authority in an attempt to enable the artwork (thing) to manifest itself to the viewer.