Projects

For SHHAN, being means more than simply being alive. The focus is on the point at which appearance and name, memory and emotion, desire and action accumulate, and one individual begins to distinguish itself from another.

Projects in this area feature black cats and the many other beings SHHAN has created. Some receive names and stories; others are given only an expression or a posture, without explanation. Even beings that begin with the same appearance become distinct individuals once they acquire different expressions, actions and memories.

Cats with human-like expressions, animals wearing crowns or clothes, and creatures that do not exist in reality reveal human desire, anxiety, self-consciousness and lack without directly depicting humans. By blurring the boundary between human and nonhuman, SHHAN examines what makes a being itself beyond its outward appearance.

The characters and creatures of Nullwood also emerge from these questions. Creating, naming and recording them goes beyond designing fictional characters: it constructs the process by which something that did not exist becomes a unique being.