It is impossible to encounter a world not coloured or warped by our own experiences and expectations. This installation is a physical framework for exploring that idea. Tri Cera invites you to engage with the installation as an active participant, to discover how it changes the ways you are reflected back to yourself and onto others, and then consider how your perspective is similarly cast onto your experience of the world and the people around you.

Our need for connection with other humans unites us. Yet we are also united by the fact that no two people will ever share exactly the same perspective. In all human interaction there is room for misunderstanding. Human experience indelibly involves being misunderstood in some way and feeling discomforted by that.

Only by moving through our discomfort can we heal and have real connection with others. To fill our need for community then, we must all allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to undertake the mortifying ordeal of being known and sometimes being misunderstood.

Funnily enough, it is often through play that we feel the most open. By including the soft, prickly, beautiful and damaged parts of herself in this installation, Tri Cera hopes to lead by example so that we may all take time to find joy in understanding not just our own humanity, but the humanity in all the people around us.

Artist Statement

(If you really want the wordier version)

Building on the philosophy that kintsugi can be interpreted as a representation of the spiritual and emotional effects of grief on a person - as the vessel that underwent the kintsugi repair remains a vessel afterwards, yet at the same time the vessel's identity is irrevocably changed – The Mortifying Ordeal (of Being Known) explores the changeable, fluid nature of identity and perception.

Contrary to popular western ideations of identity, as a fixed and permanent thing, a person’s identity grows and changes with them.  Identity, which is both the factors by which a person is recognised as an individual, and also the navigational relativity used to map connection and belonging to other people, people groups and a person's sense of place, in the intersectional contexts of the world, can and will be affected by all of those factors as much as it defines them.

Identity is affected by both the world external to a person as well as the electrical and chemical exchanges of the synapses - however neither of these factors can contain or define a person's identity. Whilst the human experience has remained largely the same since it began, it is a person's perspective that almost entirely determines the quality of their experience. It is a person's perspective that determines the interaction that occurs with both their external and internal environments, the way both are perceived and subsequently interacted with, therefore it is a person's perspective that is a more accurate encapsulation of their identity.

All humans have a physiological need to interact with other humans on a meaningful level for survival. Even more so to experience a balanced nervous system and growth. Due to the nature of perspectives though, even two people with similar experiences and the best of intentions will never share identical perspectives. A part of the human experience and survival is therefore, indelibly being misunderstood.
That is what gives human connections such meaning, because a person must be open to being perceived, interpreted, and misunderstood in order to experience the joy and peace of the human connection. They are not separate experiences, rather two indomitable aspects of humanity – a person must move through one to experience the other. All meaningful connection requires the ability to sit with discomfort to some degree.

For this installation piece, since I can only truly know my own perspective, I have undertaken The Mortifying Ordeal (of Being Known) first, allowing myself to be vulnerable enough for you to perceive, interact with, and not completely understand me. Only by moving through the installation, which is a physical representation of my perspective, and taking time to observe, interact with and understand my identity, can you accurately gage the extent and magnitude of, the way my perspective shapes my human experience. In doing so, and experiencing yourself always reflected in the installation and that reflection superimposed on the other people experiencing the work, I hope you examine the way that you perceive yourself is likewise superimposed and reflected onto the people and the environment around you.

It is my intention that you will then apply your discoveries to your own perspective, and take time to understand not only what has shaped it, but also how greatly it impacts your experiences with the world in front of you as much as the world behind your eyes.