Kekoa Paki Arts

By Kekoa Paki

Hello Reader,

I recently made one of the most personal pieces of art I have ever made in my life. I don’t really want to sully the work by attaching it to an overly long blog, so I’ll just share with you the two paragraphs I wrote to be displayed with the piece and some sketches I made while preparing for its production.

“The piece Broken came out of my experiences with injury and body image issues. The cracks in the porcelain person’s form are places where I’ve had injuries in the past, except the crack in the person’s stomach, which is meant to represent my struggles with maintaining a healthy body weight and having a distorted body image.The flowers decorating the person are anemones, which in floriography represent fragility. In my work, the three primary colors have come to carry very specific meanings; yellow represents righteousness; blue represents sorrow, and red represents hate. In this piece, the blue represents the porcelain person’s sorrow and the red their hatred for themselves. I decided to not have shards of the person on the ground as they cluttered up the scene when I wanted the viewer’s focus to be drawn to the porcelain person.

This work was derived from what I think is the universal feeling of having a body that was fundamentally broken, disgusting, and worthless. People say it’s what’s on the inside that counts, but our minds and souls are inextricably tied to our physical forms. I am my body. And if my body is worthless, then what does that make of me? And who could ever love me if I can’t love this thing which I am? I know such thoughts are naive and untrue, but I’ve found it hard to embody that truth, as do all people, I should think.”

Sketches I drew in preparation for making Broken:

The finished piece:

Thank you for reading this blog post.

From,

Kekoa Paki