Meiya Julian Takahashi
Putrefaction
“When the sick rule the world, mortality will be sexy”
Putrefaction is a series of surrealistic paintings set in a teenage-era bedroom. Cluttered with mess in a colour palette of saturated chemical colours, my project analyses my Lupus diagnosis and my impending mortality; balancing between the conscious and unconscious world. Exploring themes of death and decay, the motif of ants in my work acts as a metaphor for my illness and conveys a feeling of desolation.
Bed-bound and my blood felt like it had coagulated, travelling like syrup through my veins. The syrup would pool at my feet, and the ants would come again, nibbling and biting away at my sanity.
I took care of myself just as any young adult would. Breakfast was a cup of coffee and a smoke. Lunch was a piece of fruit and a pat on the back for not eating. For dinner it was a box of feijoa long whites and a couple lines. The body surviving purely in conjunction with the god complex of a teen and the negligence of mortality.
It was a reality check when I first became ill, but to be honest, the reality check hasn’t set in yet. Still, in denial that my body has been taken hostage by my inhibition, I am slave to the vessel that gives me life.
