boxART Forum

Many of you have written to me asking: “What is boxART?” Even though I have a website that addresses this new art concept, I am now opening another channel of communication with the aim of education. This channel is called boxART Forum.

Here is my first answer to those who are curious.

Today’s answer is: boxART is about Existence and Existence in boxART’s language is life and death. Let us return to my first boxART initiative where I invited a local amateur artist to contribute toward my project.

Her name is Gwen Szulklaper and she is a resident of the state of Victoria in Australia.

During the course of our discussion about boxART, she revealed to me how some of her relatives were prisoners of a Nazi concentration camp.

She was one of the lucky ones because her parents managed to come to Australia. She had an education in Australia but spends her time, creating art, visually. We decided on a special project on wood canvas.

Szulklaper’s work is the best example of boxART. As I reflect on my life, I can remember death is close. There is no way to avoid death although we celebrate birthdays. Have we thought about celebrating our own day of death?

boxART reminds us, firstly, that we were born without our consent because we have no conscience of consent as nothing like that has ever appeared before time. But when the time came, we came into being, thus life.

boxART is a reminder that now that we are in the form of humans, we therefore exist. Whether we exist because we are in form or we are out of form, it is inconsequential, as we remember (when we see in the mirror), there is somebody who has a name, and it is me or you or us.

Collectively, we remind each other that we exist because someone else existed before us: thus the scope of humanity. However, we also know (like what Szulklaper tells us), that life can be painful or it can also be cut short.

So, in boxART we have a box to begin. This box would probably be also our coffin. Many cultures do not have a box to place our dead bodies. Some prefer to cremate dead bodies. Some bodies disappear. Some are cut into pieces and become another creature’s meal. boxART tells us that life is not permanent; on the contrary, death is.

What can we expect about boxART when it is a reminder about death? Isn’t that what life is all about? Life has no meaning without death. Death brings us to something we can never conceive but imagine. In the meanwhile, whether we experience joy or sadness, our being proves Existence and while we live, we can also die at any moment.

When we conceived of a box, it is with the idea that life isn't two dimensions (2D); life is actually an experience of welcoming death (3D). The underlying concept in boxART is anticipation. Tragic as it may be, we never expected a submarine to break into three pieces causing grief to everybody who feels.