In recent years, “crisis” has increasingly become part of our everyday vocabulary – the subprime mortgage crisis, environmental crisis, crises of faith, animal influenza crises….
To avoid flu infections, everyone has started wearing facemasks in public places. I often observe those people on the subways with their facemasks and calm expressions. It makes me wonder, will this really solve the problem?
This calls to mind the American subprime mortgage crisis. In late 2008, the American government created a huge bailout fund to save the American Insurance Group (AIG), and AIG turned around and handed out over 200 million dollars in bonuses to their executives. This brought a lot of criticism from the American public.
In any crisis, people display a commendable self-preservation mentality. But just like this massive spider web I have made out of facemasks, we do not exist on this world in isolation, and we have all taken part in the formation of these crises. Our fantastical self-preservation measures in these crises are just as ridiculous as an ostrich burying its head in the sand.
Many of us feel that the power of an individual is too limited. The butterfly effect tells us that a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. In a dynamic system, a minute change in the underlying conditions can cause a massive chain reaction across the entire system.
No matter how we feel about it, the internet and nuclear weapons make it impossible to ever close our doors to face our problems. Perhaps we can take off our “facemasks” and show a “smiling face” to others.
For every crisis, I believe in the profound solution of millions of smiling faces revealing themselves to each other to get by.
Installation
150 protection masks woven into a spider web
Edition: 1+3 AP
