Butterflies of fortune 3/3

This series begins with the repetition of a single subject, and with how that repetition moves between the collective and the personal, from the objective to the subjective. Every detail is a signifier that carries its own story, which is why the subjects are drawn and returned to with the same themes. But as I draw, the same marks inevitably send me back to a memory, touching my recollection and my sensibility. Repetition, in theory neutral and mechanical, becomes unique, shaped by a third story that belongs neither entirely to the subject nor to me.

The faces, the hair and the shape of the butterflies are the common ground. Their bodies are where the story unfolds: the body becomes a page telling our lives, a reminder that personality is not innate but built from memories and experiences. Among the "neutral" signs is the skeleton, the narrative frame each of us stands on. There are genitals and breasts, symbols of the development we all have to reckon with, but also of intimacy and vulnerability. The alphabet recurs, standing for the education that forged us, for what we learned to imitate. The house, the heart and the organs are all connected, representing what sustains us: our primary needs, such as being cared for and recognizing affection.

Houses in particular become a portal to memory that is too personal, leaving behind the idea of neutrality. When I let myself follow a self-referential interpretation of what they mean to me, they degenerate into patterns of connections that are never the same twice. The eye is the "vision" each of us applies to things, which takes over and denies any single truth. I render it through calculations and numbers tied to my own visual difficulties. Then there is the car, the journey, the growth and change each of us faces, moving closer to or further from "home": what we believe ourselves to be, or the people who represent us.

A final focus is the grid inside a circle, reinterpreting the form of certain Thai amulets. Some squares are filled with a dot, others are left empty: the wheel of probability, the luck we are all subject to. When is it our turn? When does fate choose us and guide us toward our calling? In some butterflies the grid sits at the top, like someone who will soon learn their duties; in others it sits at the bottom, like someone waiting for their turn. In one last subject the squares are filled in random order, standing for surprise and, at times, frustration in the face of life's inequalities and unpredictability.

Read together, it is a story partly written in broad strokes, with traits common to us all. It borrows the iconography and schematic quality of a birth chart, the arrangement of the planets at the moment we are born, which traditional astrology uses to interpret the course of a life.