ART RATIONALE

If man are naturally in a state of war, why do they always carry arms and why do they have
keys to lock their doors? Thomas Hobbes

Human are born evil; we are corrupted creatures driven by selfish motives, who are
willing to go to any extent to better our position. In the state of nature, when we are exposed,
naked, with no constraints of society, no rules or laws to dictate our actions, we acted upon our
self-interested impulses. The wild, nature mask represent us in the state of nature, the time before
people lived together in a society. Black, dead leaves on the background suggested that we are
destructive, negatively affecting our surrounding, like a fire burning, smoldering the green, thick
undergrowth around it days after the days; causing it not to be burned out completely but charred
and black. The mask, painted with war make-up, represent us in the state of nature, where we
have to battle for our lives and live in perpetual fear of one another. Then, our undeniable, innate
evilness will sometimes surged above the surface and sometimes sank beneath, shrouded by the
moral ideas of a civil society. This devilish, venomous snake slithered through us, appearing and
disappearing between our eyes holes. Its deadly fangs sank deep into our skin, spreading lethal
venom through our veins.

Our other self, the one exists within a civil society, where there is order and authority to
dictate our moral judgments, covered himself/herself with luxuries, with excessive amount of
goods. Enslaved to their craving of artificial needs, we forced and dominated others to work to
fulfill our needs. Our evilness supposedly will be contained under order, authority, government
and society, under the influences of morality and rationality. We become good only through
experience and learned behavior. Yet, our evilness is restless, crawling under our skin; it wants
to break free, to manifest all over us. However, society had placed such concrete rules and laws
on us; the only place our evilness can spouts is through our eyes, sharp, lethal spikes.

In the state of nature (Mary Tran)
Mask: The mask was painted black with red war paint on the side. This decoration of the
mask represent human kind in our most natural state. The red color is blood dripping from our
covered-in-mud, black face. We are in a constant state of war, driven to kill in order to satisfy
our desires. In the state of nature, when we are exposed, naked, with no constraints of society,
with no rules or laws to dictate our actions, we acted upon our impulses of self-interest. We
killed anyone or anything that gets in our way, in order for us to get what we want. Cruel and
wicked, we are, described through the masks decorations.

Dead, black leaves with branches: The black branches along with the dead, charred,
black leaves indicated that we are metaphorically and physically in the state of nature, the wild, a
place with no society. We, with our destructive warfare, started to destroy our surrounding, bit
by bit. Like fire slowly spread throughout the woods, burning, not completely all the leaves and
branches of the trees, with just enough harshness to char the leaves. We as human beings not
only kill our kind for the sake of survival but also destroy our environment, taking it for granted
rather than a more than wonderful gift from Mother Nature. Beside the branches, the background,
the canvas itself is also black indicating both the rest, broader version of the environment and our
true self, an entire screen of blackness. The color black in the background, contrary to the
common belief that is will neutralize the mask, emphasizes on the shiny black and red mask. The
mask, highlighted by the monochromatic effect, stands out among the dead leaves and black
branches.

Green, plastic snake: The snake is an embodiment of the innate evil the lives within us.
This monster tries its very best to rise up above our skin, exercising it utmost power in corrupting
us, enhancing our selfishness. Sometimes, the snake will sank below, slithering underneath our
skin, controlling our thoughts, actions, and emotions, manipulating us the way it always does.

In society (Kyle Dip)
Crystals: Human are highly social creatures. In the fear of chaos, they come together to
create society, with peaceful order that uphold peace. In this society, there are limitations such as
moral judgments about good and evil, the central authority to dictate our actions and so on.
These restrictions are meant to suppress and cage our innate evilness, the snake when we are in
our natural state. The crystal, epitomize those restraints. Generations after generations, our
parents taught us what is considered universally good and evil. They laid these concrete beliefs,
foundations on us, expecting us to breathe them in, to absorb them into our system. However,
because evil runs in our blood, we were not able to do what they wanted us to do. This date back
to the so-called original sin caused by the disobedience of Adam and Eve. Since then, human
are conceived in guilt, sin and evilness. Born with sinful natures, we cannot help but act upon the
cravings that driven us to kill. Since we cannot absorb those beliefs, they laid upon the surface of
our face. Day by day, little by little, they built up, creating a thick layer, hard and cold as stone.
The crystals on the masks are those layers, those restraints and beliefs that we are forced to put
our faith in.

Spikes: Because the preexisting surface was too hard to crack open, our evilness, were
not able to breakthrough. This is true in our actual world. Heavily influenced by nowadays-moral
standards and judgments, many of us were unable to express our evilness. We turned into good
people, trying our best to contain the undying rising darkness. As strong as the layers were, now
and then, the evilness find its way to the surface. The evilness in a modernized society and
civilization are represented through spikes. Since our eyes were the only body parts that were not
plastered with all these teachings, the spikes sprouted through the eyes, forcing humans moral to
step aside and given the controlling role to our evilness. That is the reason why even after all
those years of teaching, training, self-controlling, some of us can still stray from our righteous
path and commit horrible crimes. The reason why we choose the eyeholes as a place for the
spikes to went through was because theres a phrase in Vietnamese saying that our eyes is the
windows from which others can see whats truly inside our soul. Moreover, we believed that no
matter how much layers humans managed to build to cover it up, deep down inside, there is
evilness inside of us. Therefore, we believed that, if there were anywhere evilness showed on the
human body under the influences of a society, it would be the eyes.

To conclude, we both believed in the existence of n innate evilness inside everyone. The
fact that even though were far from our state of nature, every day in our life, in the modern,
improved civilization, we still have to struggle and battle for our existence. Poor people are not
getting enough food while the rich ones stuffed their stomach with various types and kinds of
expensive cuisines. Our artificial needs drove us toward actions like forcing others to work for us,
supply us with unnecessary amount of goods, just to satisfy our greed. It is undeniable that we all
got greed, corruption, wicked desires inside of us, in general, evilness. To our belief, our
artworks had successfully conveyed in summary our extended view on human nature.