To Yearn For is a light retelling of the Speech of Aristophanes' in Plato's Symposium, the myth of the origin of soulmates. Aristophanes writes that in the beginning, there were three genders, males born from the sun, females born from the earth, and androgynous' born from the moon. Each person was two times what they are today. Humans had four arms, four legs, and two genitals. As human knowledge progressed, Zeus and the other gods of Olympus felt threatened by us. Zeus decided to rip the humans apart, leaving each one with two arms, two legs, one head, and a belly button two remind us of what once was our other half. We are left craving our original form, punished for eternity to find the one that once was.
When reading the myth, forms of the human body danced around my mind. They danced and played out the tale right in front of me. I imagined figures intertwining into one another and being pulled together as if they were two magnets. Through this series, I wanted to challenge myself and explore figures and forms of the human body while representing their meaning within portraits without a face. How could I depict the moments of trying to find something you don't even know you lost? Moments when you are away, moments when you yearn for them, moments when you are, at last, reunited.
