ABOUT

The work is structurally based on an anti-tank beach obstacle commonly known as the ‘Czech hedgehog’, a name derived from its country of origin, Czechoslovakia. The sharp edges, aluminium frame, and protruding form directly reference the flourishing of existentialist dialogue that emerged as a consequence of wartime or traumatic experiences.

 

Post-World War II, philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus led a cultural movement that explored the implications of a seemingly meaningless existence. They emphasised the importance of realising one’s universal freedom, which enables individuals to take ownership of their responsibilities and seek their unique subjective experience of reality. Existentialists encourage individuals to confront their individual human condition as a source of actualisation, facing their anxieties and fears to place themselves at the centre of their reality. This doesn’t mean succumbing to a spiral of meaninglessness; instead, it calls for courageous living in an ‘absurd’ reality.

 

Existential Cross aims to personify these ideas into a singular work. By nature, it references the aforementioned post-war movement, with three moving pieces protruding outward. The sharpness and brutalist nature of the work attempt to dialogue with the harshness of our reality. However, its balanced structure ensures that the central piece of the work is always different depending on the viewer’s position around it. This re-focuses the perspective, emphasising the individual’s ‘absolute freedom’ and internal process of confrontation with a godless universe. The physical presence of the work within a space suggests it as an individual existential being, confronting the world’s harshness with its own piercing construction.