AL MEFER

Statement

In the formation of our reality, three types of color-sensing cells, known as photoreceptors, enable our perception of different wavelengths the brain processes to create a visual representation. Some species have as many as 12 of these sensors, while some have evolved with sight shifted towards infrared or ultraviolet ends of the spectrum. Our biological configuration determines how we experience the world and our knowledge of other biological systems invites us to think of other realities, characterized by features of the unimaginable. 

How we understand the world is inseparable of our evolutionary history. Genetic programs code how brain development has to occur, and its success culminates in the construction of a biological system equal to their conspecifics, but with characteristics that make them differ in their behavior and in the processes that underlie it. Moreover, social and developmental actors imprint our behavior in a way that biases our thoughts and emotions. Societal challenges such as wars or immigration dictate our issues of interest and the emotional state to perceive them. Our conditions sculpt our vision of the world, creating a plethora of possibilities that deserve our study and imagination. 

In my experience, aesthetic expression represents a sort of meditation, as understood in Buddhist traditions, in which I liberate myself from needs and feelings and the only focus left is the creation of the artwork, without judgement, thoughts of enjoyment nor desperation. In the arts my interest for social, psychological and biological events finds a means to muse about the phenomenology of reality conceptualized through the experience of the dissimilar. A channel to think of the world as seen by the depressed, the immigrant or the alien. A language to image the possibilities of the future. A canvas to bring together issues of current debate and a delicate atmosphere to discuss them.