I Can't Be Bouldered (2020)

I Can't Be Bouldered (2020)

Acrylic on canvas

Artist Statement

This painting was made based on the Greek legend of Sisyphus, who was eternally cursed by the gods to repeatedly push a boulder up a hill, only for it to roll down again. This myth was popularised by Albert Camus to signify the repetition in our lives and our persistence in the struggle through the absurdities and mundanities of life. Thus, coining the term “absurdism” in philosophy.

Whilst toying with many different strands of philosophies of life in my art, I have always been deeply drawn to the idea of absurdism and nihilism. Absurdism is when individuals create meaning in their lives so that they can live a fulfilling and valuable life, even though many of the meanings created are milestones which hold little value. On the other spectrum, we have nihilism, the belief that our lives hold no meaning or value and thus, purpose is not required to live a fulfilling life.

Inspired by humans’ persistence through everyday life in the face of irrationalities, I have discovered that the essential ingredient to this persistence and our ability to create meaning in our lives is hope. Hope fuels the human resilience in creating our own purpose in our lives, even if the purpose has very little point in the grand scheme of things. The scene of the painting is something similar you can see on a hiking trip. With rose-tinted glasses, the enthusiastic characters in my painting roll their boulders up a hill, only for it to come crashing down – a metaphor for our enthusiasm towards a repetitive and mundane life by creating artificial milestones, goals and meaning to our lives.

I opted to satirise and metaphorise how humans need and seek for inherent meaning and value to life instead of accepting the irrationality and natural chaos in our world. Even though there are several characters in the painting with their respective colourful boulders, the sunburnt man in the background is the main focus who lends a nihilistic voice to this painting, narrating the title of the painting – that he “can’t be bothered”. His role in the painting is to disrupt and prod the viewers to reconsider what hope means and whether the act of creating meaning in our lives is necessary for a fulfilling life or a futile attempt to create something out of nothing.

With the tug of war between absurdism and nihilism, comes a critical discussion on the role of hope in our lives and how we use hope in living a life that is fulfilling and meaningful to us.