Becoming–After Phase II Manifesto

Becoming–After Phase II Manifesto

The Printed Body

Can a digital print cease to be a reproduction
and become the body that remains after ritual?

Becoming–After Phase II begins with this question.

Becoming–After is the material procedure through which Post-Vanitas is enacted.

Ceramic remains the first body of Becoming–After.

Yet now, its fragments and particles acquire a second body on canvas.

Matter that has passed through fire and fracture

is no longer the residue of destruction.

It is the particle of dignity that remains after collapse.

In this work, printing is not reproduction.

The print is the first structural layer through which a digital image enters material reality.

It is a contemporary mode of inscription through which the image begins to occur again as a body.

The work does not end with the printed image.

The image is clothed again in matter upon the canvas.

Ceramic powder and acrylic do not serve as decorative coverings,

but as a new skin and structure that sustain the image.

At this point, the printed image no longer remains a flat surface.

It passes through matter, time, and touch,

and becomes a body that remains after ritual.

What I ask is not whether a printed canvas can be recognized as art.

That question is already obsolete.

What I ask is this:

Can a reproduced image pass through post-collapse matter

and occur once again as a dignified body?

Can a body captured digitally,

after passing through ritual and reconstruction,

become not merely an image, but a relic?

This portrait series is not self-portraiture in the conventional sense.

It is not the destination of Post-Vanitas, but its origin rite:

the passage through which the living body begins to become the Crowned Weeping Skull.

Here, the image does not remain a surface.

It passes through desire, through collapse, and is clothed again in matter.

At last, it stands not as ornament, but as testimony.

The crown is not an ornament of power.

It is the form of dignity that remains after collapse.

The tear is not an emotional effect.

It is the crystallized trace of time that a being has passed through.

The lips are not a surface of seduction.

They are the skin that remains after desire and survival.

The skull is not a representation of death.

It is the final testimony that remains after every surface has been stripped away:

the skeleton of life that becomes dignified only after collapse.

Therefore, this work is not merely mixed media.

It is a structure in which the artist’s body performs a rite,

is captured by the camera,

remains as a digital print,

and is then clothed again in post-collapse matter,

moving toward the icon of Post-Vanitas.

I am not proposing a new combination of materials.

I am making the afterimage of a rite I have performed

occur again as a body that testifies to dignity after collapse.

When the image passes through the reconstruction of ceramic powder and acrylic,

it ceases to be reproduction and becomes body.

It ceases to be decoration and becomes structure.

It ceases to be surface and becomes testimony.

It ceases to be technique and becomes aesthetics.

This is where Becoming–After Phase II begins.

From the ceramic body to the printed body.

From broken fragments to the reconstruction of the image.

From the surface of reproduction to the body that remains after ritual.

From personal collapse to the form that survives.

This is not reproduction.

This is material reconstruction.

This is the second body of Becoming–After.

It is a new surface of dignity

for painting after the digital.

Jiya Lim

Maison Philosophe

Post-Vanitas Era / Becoming–After Phase II

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