Projects

No being in SHHAN’s work is entirely independent. Beings continually change as they observe, touch, love or fear, dominate or depend on others. Relation is not an encounter between already complete beings, but a process through which they change one another’s existence.

Projects in this area examine relationships between humans and animals, among humans, and between different living beings and their environments. SHHAN is particularly interested in why people empathize with some beings while remaining indifferent to others, and the grounds on which they judge another being as equal to or different from themselves.

Reversing the positions of humans and animals, or placing another being in a familiar situation, unsettles these criteria. As the viewpoint shifts, so do the boundaries of superiority and inferiority, good and evil, protection and domination that once seemed self-evident.

Yet relationships in SHHAN’s work do not necessarily lead to understanding or reconciliation. Some beings understand and connect with one another; others never do. Affection and violence, empathy and indifference, dependence and separation can coexist within a single relationship.

Nullwood likewise takes shape as the stories of countless individual beings intersect. The actions and traces left by one affect another’s life, and their consequences lead to further relationships. Through these connections, SHHAN considers what one being comes to mean in the life of another.