Wipes and Napkins
Through the prism of contemplation and art
Wipes are felt airy for me. Initially, they are moist, but they are soft and can dry really fast. They are stretchable, unlike napkins.
If you stretch wipes out, they look like sheets of paper, but they are so disparate. Paper can be used for a production, unlike wipes. Paper is a vessel for ideas that gives the opportunity to write things down to keep them out of head.
Wipes are used to clean babies, I think. They will absorb all your baby’s problems and dirt. Napkins will clean adult’s mouth and nose. Eventually, both types will keep us clean.
It seems to be more satisfying for people when they can clean themselves and through it away immediately. There is no dirt in the space anymore unlike having a reusable handkerchief.
Like so many commodities around us, wipes and napkins have a repetitive nature.
Even though it represents purification for me, it is also so close to dirtiness being a tool for cleaning. Ablutions by Bill Viola provides a sense of purification through these gestures, but the concept is still perceived as divided from its opposition here.
I’m thinking about the installation correlates with this theme. The idea itself is controversial because the condition of purification is so temporary. Once you place wipes on the ground, stand on them, and they become dirty. It brings them together with human’s sins as an idea of constantly falling into them. You don’t have a choice of being totally clean and pure in this world all the time. However, I see the idealisation in it, so I would like to make a naive attempt to protect this temporary property of human beings. The sidenote is cleanliness is something that we share with animals unlike metaphorical, religious purity.
The installation would use white moist wipes placed on the floor and covered with the pale of glass.
You can stand onto it.
Wipe is not only a piece of material. But if we change the context, then we’ll seek another narrative surrounding it as “wipe your tears away”.
Paradoxically, but I don’t recommend wiping your tears with wipe. It is being so carefully produced by your eyes that you don’t want to make it wetter. The aim is not only to clean your face after drops of salt water, you can do it with your hand. I think many people start using the cleaning material in this case as a supportive material to place their eyes into.
Unless the tears are made of glass as Man Ray has done, and you don’t have to wipe them away.
Eventually, purity is not a property. It is meditated and created by the process of going away from the opposite side. Because of it, purity has a temporary nature. It can be spoilt even by doing nothing. For instance, if we stay wipes lying on the floor for a month, they will be covered by dust. Without any actions, cleanliness is not naturally preserved.
It is close to the distinction between good and evil, and whether they can exist without each other or not.
