PROJECTIONS: SEARCHING series. 2015

PROJECTIONS: SEARCHING

Exhibited at Almakan gallery, curated by Visual Therapy. Kuwait City, Kuwait. 2015

One of the challenges in anthropology is finding the precise derivation of human culture and early activities, with the invention and use of the mask representing one of the unanswered questions today. The use of masks dates back several millennia. It is believed that the first masks may have generally been used by primitive people to associate the wearer with some kind of unimpeachable authority, such as “the gods” or to otherwise lend credence to the person’s claim on a given social role.

Humans worldwide have used masks since ancient times for sacred rituals, as ornamentation, in performances and theatre. The mask disguises the identity of its owner, and symbolizes the need to hide or repress a person’s desires, fears or concerns.

Skount considers that everyone carries masks; with it we conceal our identity and adopt a more socially acceptable image to get by day to day. However, there are also moments in which we can reveal our true nature, and take them off.

This time Skount focus his artworks on the study of projection as a defense mechanism by which the subject attributes to others their virtues or defects, including their shortcomings. This phenomenon operates in situations of emotional conflict, internal or external threat of origin, attributing to other people or objects feelings, thoughts and desires that they never quite accepted in themselves because they generate distress or anxiety.

As a result, the person can lose his real soul by trying to draw a new identity while looking at others distorting or redrawing their true identity in order to blend with mainstream society.

This is a clear symptom of paranoia as deformation of a normal process that leads us to search the outside world the cause of our affections.

Although the term was used by Sigmund Freud from 1895 to refer specifically to a mechanism observed in paranoid personalities or subjects directly paranoid, various psychoanalytic schools have later generalized the concept to designate a primary defense. As such, it is present in all psychic structures (in psychosis, neurosis and perversion). Therefore, in attenuated form, also operates in certain forms of thought completely normal everyday life.

For this time, Skount with “Projection: Searching” presents, through his artworks, a metaphorical seeking for the inner self of our existence; our roots, identity, and afterlight.

By removing their metaphorical mask and by leaving behind hidden feelings, thoughts or desires, the person can try to look for his inner self, adopting behaviors of other people close to him. This creates an inner self as a projection of other people or a fusion of our inner universe with each person that is part of our life.

This kind of seeking erases our identity as individual people and generates a collective identity influenced by the people or society that surrounds us, adopting a role of conduct, feelings, thoughts and shared emotions that redraws our inner self.

PROJECTIONS: SEARCHING, Lenght: 01 min 45 sec. (Stereo) HD. Camera and photography: Laguna, Video editing: Elena de la Rubía.