15.6.12

Artist's statement (2011)

Uranometria brings together two things: Excerpts from Carl Jung’s introduction to Richard Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching and the astronomical maps from Johan Bayer’s Uranometria, which is the first Western celestial atlas, created in 1603.

Although the Age of the Enlightenment was still centuries away, I think that Uranometria is an early harbinger of it, presaging a mindset which is grounded in causality and reason. And then I am also thinking of the whole nature of western astrology with its mechanistic, clockwork universe in which the rigidly structured/ predetermined sojourn of the planets chart out seemingly immutable patterns of influence upon human life... Which is so very different from the fluid, ever changing universe of the I Ching which caused Jung to coin the term “synchronicity.”

Thus my avatar selves are dressed up as Uranometric zodiac signs, held captive by their star bound fate which is represented by the similarly attired and caged humanoid objects that revolve around them.

In their vicinity however Jung’s words float freely, tossed hither and tither by virtual winds...