The realities of life can be overwhelming and inescapable at times. The idea of the imaginarium originates from this need to escape somewhere far away, where nothing goes wrong and you have control. An imaginarium is a place where reality subsides and your imagination takes over, offering you solace and comfort during times when everything seems to come crushing down. This imaginarium can transform according to one’s desires, changing into a place that brings you difficult self-fulfilment or blissful ignorance.
In this expansive oeuvre, we see curtains, coated in colourful patterns and swirls, being drawn away to reveal a surreal landscape filled with towering trees, lush shrubbery and an out of place yet splendid chandelier. The scene that greets our eyes beyond the curtains may seem inviting but its lack of colour appears to be ominous. Perhaps the colourlessness of the landscape heeds a warning that your imagination can help you escape reality, but at what cost?
It is the realities of life that sparks the creative spirit and our most primitive need to survive, trying to escape into the coaxing world of our imagination will only dull the vibrant colours of the human experience. These vibrant colours are reflected in the patterns of the curtains, as the curtains are the only real object in the whole artwork. As we are made to gaze off into the imaginarium’s grey horizon, we are faced with a question: why do we choose to escape into a make-belief world, when life itself has so much to offer? The imaginarium in this oeuvre asks us: are we ready to draw the curtains on our imaginariums, so we can finally face and triumph over the challenges in our lives?
