My idea for Inertia first came about when I was 20 years old.
The whole idea was inspired by my significant mental, emotional, and spiritual growth as a result of engaging myself in a personal development and life success course which took place a year prior.
The things that I had experienced were life changing and I wanted others to hopefully experience a glimpse of that journey but within themselves.
These personal development experiences were full of self-discovery as I am now able to adapt to my own internal dialogue that's within my conscious and subconscious mind. I see this with true clarity and profound self-reflection.
This led me to seeing life from new perspectives creating a firm belief in myself and in turn, others. I became aware of the fact that my perception of others is a direct reflection of how I saw myself. There are infinite stories and reasons within my mind about the experiences I've had and continue to have in life. In the end they are simply just stories and can be rewritten or redefined. I can do this by saying my personal affirmations and with this awareness, I feel infinite.
I wanted to recreate this within an interactive installation, one where I not only could use as a personal discovery tool, but also one where others could potentially use for their own self-reflection or whatever thoughts they bring into the space really.
The reason behind the infinity mirror illusions was to recreate the infinite feeling that I have within myself. It is also because it allows me and others to see themselves from literal different perspectives that mirrors inherently possess utilising the science of light and reflections. This was also inspired by Kusama's infinity mirrored rooms.
The purpose of the repeated sound echoes is to show that there's a power in words and the things said around you. What we choose to say or not say can come back in other ways or even affect us in what we say to ourselves or the opinions said from others. The choice of headphones over speakers was a tough decision but it really came down to the fact that having headphones can give a sense of intimacy and sort of ignore the outside world.
The reason for the room and size is because I wanted it to be for one person to have enough room to feel intimate and alone with themselves but still have enough space to walk about and not to feel claustrophobic. It's a metaphor for stepping into our own mind.
I painted it black simply because like our mind, it is unseen similar to how the colour can represent a void or the darkness of space. It does not imply that our minds are inherent with dark thoughts but rather some thoughts are difficult to see but can be revealed with a bit of light. The colour black also allows the user to fixate their eye and focus on the mirrors and lights in the space rather than if there was colour or a bright white.
The intention of Inertia is ultimately to facilitate a space for one to see themselves beyond the superficial reflections and to ask themselves, who am I?
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