TOOLS
4 June, 2025
I awake.
I roll to one side and with blurred vision reach out to grab the smoothed glass-like tool on my bedside.
Before my eyes have time to adapt, before they have greeted the natural daylight of the sun, a violent opposition attempts to penetrate their thresholds.
The glass is smooth in my hands, and all I can see are my fingers interacting with the images, text, and data on the screen.
I awake.
Where am I? I ask myself. I pull my hands in front of my eyes, but cannot see. The area around me is white. There should be ample light for my eyes to perceive what is going on around me. Yet still, I cannot see. No hands in front of my face.
Confused, I try to find out what it is that’s causing this blinding light. Yet in all directions is nothing. Nothing but white blinding light. Nothing but everything.
This series, TOOLS, depicts a notion in which I have begun to call ‘the light age’. Many academics claim that we now reside within a new dark age of society. One which is substantially more devious than the last.
Concealed and hidden behind words such as ‘intellect’ and ‘wisdom’ – data and information wear these titles falsely, and have been crowned king.
This series depicts no one nation. It does not mean to call out or represent race, ethnicity, age, gender, or religious affiliation. It is a reminder that we are all one. Yet in that one-ness, the one thing we have in common is our individuality.
Our eyes have yet to adjust to this blinding light of the information age. Our screens, phones, and tablets connect us while simultaneously distancing us from our-selves and our hands in front of our faces. We forget the greatest tools given to us were not by tech companies, but given to us at birth. We are shadows contrasted by the light of technology.
No artist is complete without this set of tools in their repertoire. My camera is simply an extension of my finger, a supplement to my eye meant to capture these moments of people using their tools.
Just as our eyes are thresholds to our souls, our hands are the tools with which we define and communicate that soul. Whether you are an academic using them to write and read, a business man using them to shake other hands, or a craftsman using them to build, these tools define who we are.
I can reach up using my hands and feel my head – but never will I see it. I will never see my eye. Yet with my hands – my tools – I can interact with the world. And so do you.
From a certain point of view, hands exit the frame of reference, to extend and attach to the body. They give us a perspective of where our body is in space, and in time. They balance us. They give us sensation. Even though we cannot see – we can feel.
Today it is more important than ever to remember what it is to feel. Logic, information, and data will tell us that ‘feeling’ is many times illogical. We are told this ‘feeling’ can be and should be controlled through codified responses. Yet feelings can many times be irrational.
You reach out to touch something you have never seen before in order to understand it’s texture – to learn how to use it. You reach out to the one you love in order to feel them, to empathize with them.
The child first interacts with the world with their hands. Through this interaction and experience the child gains both fingerprints and identity.
Our fingerprints are left as a trace upon everything we touch, and no two are alike. They become our Soulprints. Because of homogenization through globalization it is becoming ever pressing that we remember our individuality. The only way to resist this is through art. ‘I’ is the only pronoun that I correspond to and quite literally identify with. The ‘I’ is my identity, my identification, and no one can take that away from me. Through my soulprints I will leave my fingerprints all over the world – through my art. I urge you to do the same.