沉睡在荒野中的一千零一夜

——藝術家LUPA的「人間勿語」

文/張慧慧

故事從一場沙漠的音樂會開始。穿著蓬蓬裙的女孩茫然呆立在沙漠中、看不清面容的孩子奔走在廣袤的岩層之上、長髮的天真少女藏身在瀑布之後、一身白袍的女子如新娘也似巫地走向祭壇⋯⋯這是藝術家 Lupa (b. 1989) 將在Hiro Hiro Art Space展出的個展「人間勿語」，她以繪畫與雕塑彼此映照，透過一種非線性語言的流動印象羅列，讓她的經典角色——永恆少年褪下金箔後，以真實且多變的樣貌，奔走在一幕幕自然風景中，追尋心的足跡，訴說內在故事，回應對世界的觀察與疑惑。

埋藏永恆記憶的岩景

畢業於倫敦藝術大學-中央聖馬汀學院，本科爲服裝設計的Lupa，創作領域橫跨服裝、音樂、繪畫、雕塑等。在「人間勿語」系列中，她藉由油畫、雕塑等媒材，從夢境、與四歲女兒共讀的童話、童年時的記憶、半醒的幻象之中，延續2018年誕生的永恆少年一角，隨著生命旅程遇到的變動與成長，投射出「自我意識初始化」而延伸的更多角色，讓這些小小的人兒潛入荒野、斷崖、洞穴、瀑布、湖泊，行走、奔逃在廣袤大地。「我常會把人畫得渺小，想要用遠望的方式，去刻劃這種對自然和生命的崇敬及無能為力。」Lupa平靜地說。

多年來，創立「角色」是Lupa靠近自我與世界的方式，這些取材自神話、童話、夢境，神秘、跨文化的角色，在她的作品中反覆現身，反射的都是這名藝術家多重面貌的流動自我，「清醒地覺察自身所處的狀態，讓這些狀態能自由進出不同的內在房間。變動，對我來說是一種自然的常態。」 

在《野床》、《陽染》、《人間勿語》等作中，Lupa以夢囈般的喃喃獨白，讓這些人物漫無目的，但充滿動力地前行在穩固的大片岩壁風景中。因為那些層層疊疊的礦脈是沉澱潛意識的荒原，不只埋藏著我們所有的恐懼，也安置著我們珍愛的、想永久保存的事物—那是人類最複雜的情感與集體記憶。

「很多事情是無法言喻的，我用虛構的風景和人物間的微妙距離和氛圍，去記錄某個時期的狀態，可能是承受或無助，自在或釋懷。」Lupa說，「勿語 ，取自『物語』諧音，矛盾的語義中，傳達了用沉默的思考和感受去講述不可言說或若有似無的人間故事。」有時，無聲勿語反能無限地講述，藝術家將沒能說出口的，都藏在畫面中，「岩層安靜地接收歷史、訊息，是穩定的陪伴。我們走在人間，經歷這一切，最終，我們也都會成為岩層的一部分。」她省略一切非必要的敘述，著力於自然景象中帶有表現性的肌理，要觀者用想像對照那些自己埋藏在岩層中的內在經驗。

述說封存在底層的集體無意識

透過創作，Lupa回應了瑞士心理學家榮格（Carl Gustav Jung）對於自我、情結、陰影和集體無意識——「原型」等探索，因此描繪出如《波瑟芬妮》等以人格原型為母題的作品。

《波瑟芬妮》是「人間勿語」系列中，以具體角色命名的作品之一。波瑟芬妮是希臘神話中具有雙重形象的角色，既是天真無邪的豐收女神，也是被冥王擄走而被迫成為的冷血冥后。Lupa筆下的冥后是一名將自己隔絕在瀑布中的異國女子，「創傷是贈與天真的成長儀式。」她在閱讀波瑟芬妮的故事後，記下了這條註解。因波瑟芬妮原是掌管春天的女神，象徵天真少女的原型，備受母親呵護，直到被冥王抓走步入冥府婚姻後萬物枯竭，重返大地和母親在一起時則萬物復甦，是再生與死亡的極端象徵。藝術家在此原型中投射了自己的人生經驗，「童話與神話就是虛構的現實世界，透過閱讀和創作自我對話，為境遇找到對應的解釋或梳理方式。」

藝術家逼近自己沉澱、封存的內在經驗，將心理感知所觸及到的未知，擴大為集體潛意識中你我的故事，用Lupa的說法，「人間勿語」是她向觀者以畫面無聲訴說的《一千零一夜》，「將我對於自身問題的耽溺，轉換為一種企圖給他人的療癒和關懷。」因為，不管是生活在哪裡、哪個世代，即便是在遙遠的彼岸，我們都曾經歷過自我探索的孤獨與封閉，並且渴望去追逐、觸及些什麼。

她以理解與共感，描繪出這些夢境／真實、抽象／具象、現在／過去／未來無限交疊的時空場景，為的是「讓那些跟我一樣，會突然疑惑自己為何身在此處的人，覺察並接納這個狀態，而不感到孤單。」Lupa微笑：「因為這裡有人跟妳一樣。」

One Thousand and One Nights Dormant in the Wilderness

——The Unspoken Tales by LUPA

Foreword by HUI CHANG

The story germinates from a desert concert: a girl wearing a puffy dress stands absent-mindedly in the desert; a child whose face is blurry runs on a vast rocky land; an innocent maiden with flowy long hair hides herself behind a waterfall; a young woman dressed like a bride in white walks towards an altar in the manner of a shaman… These are part of the latest solo exhibition of Crystal Lupa (b. 1989) – The Unspoken Tales, presented at Hiro Hiro Art Space. The artist adopts fluid impressions depicted with a non-linear language to interlace paintings and sculptures, thus allowing her iconic character – “Puer Aeternus,” freed from its previous gilded image, to traverse various natural sceneries with a truthful yet varied image in pursuit of an inner journey, telling her inner stories, while responding to her observations of and questions about the world.

A Rocky Landscape Concealing Eternal Memories

Majored in fashion design at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, Lupa’s art practice engages in fashion, music, painting, and sculpture. In her latest art series – The Unspoken Tales, she employs oil painting and sculpture to continue developing the narrative of “Puer Aeternus” – a character she created in 2018 – through the use of dreams, fairytales she reads to her four-year-old daughter, childhood memories, illusions from a half-waking sleep or a state of trance, etc. Following changes and growth in her life journey, she is able to create more characters extended from her projection of “the inception of self-consciousness.” These tiny figures walk or run through a world of land comprising wilderness, cliffs, caves, waterfalls, and lakes—“I often reduce human figures into tiny existence, creating long-shot views to delineate a sense of awe and helplessness that I feel about nature life.”

Over the years, creating “characters” has been Lupa’s way of approaching herself as well as the world. These characters inspired by mythologies, fairytales, dreams, the occult, and intercultural experiences appear repeatedly in her work, reflecting the artist’s multifaceted and fluid self—“I would be very clearly aware of my own states of mind, enabling them to form different rooms within my mind. Change, to me, is quite a natural state of things.”

Works like Bed in Wilderness, Sun Dyed, and The Unspoken Tales resemble Lupa’s self-whispers in dreams. She has the characters moving forward aimlessly yet lively in an expansive landscape of sturdy rock cliffs. The vivid layers of rock formation represent the wilderness of the subconscious, where all our fears are buried, as well as where the things we wish to cherish and preserve for eternity deposit—in short, it signals the most complex emotions and collective memories of the humankind.

“There are a lot of things that cannot be described by words. So, I use fictional sceneries and characters to portray the nuanced distance and atmosphere, and to record the states from a certain period, which might be bearing burdens or being helpless, feeling at ease or letting go.” Lupa said, “the term ‘勿語’ (meaning ‘unspoken’ or ‘not to be spoken’) sounds the same as ‘物語’ (meaning ‘tale’ or ‘story’). Such contradiction of meanings conveys my approach to telling earthly stories of the inexpressible or intangible through thoughts and feelings surfacing in quietude.” Sometimes, wordless silence contrarily allows one to express without restraints. The artist embeds the unsaid in her images—“the rocky layers absorb histories and messages quietly, forming a reliable support. We experience this as we continue to move through this world. Eventually, we all become part of these layers of rock.” Therefore, she leaves out the unnecessary descriptions, and concentrates on the expressive veins and textures in natural landscape, inviting spectators to activate their imagination to compare and form their own connections with the inner experiences that they have buried into the rocky layers.

Narrating the Collective Unconscious Sealed Up in the Depth

Through creation, Lupa is able to respond to the ideas of the self, complexes, shadow, and collective unconscious discussed by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung—namely, the exploration of “archetypes.” Hence, she has created Persephone and other works that feature the motifs of the Jungian archetypes.

Persephone is one of the works named after an existing character in The Unspoken Tales series. A Greek mythological figure with dual images, Persephone is both the innocent goddess of abundant harvest, and the queen of the underworld after she was forcibly taken by Hades. In Lupa’s painting, on the other hand, the queen of the underworld is transformed into a woman from an exotic country, who isolates herself behind a waterfall. “Trauma is a ritual of growing up gifted to innocence”—this is what Lupa noted down after she read Persephone’s story. Persephone, as the goddess in charge of the spring, is the archetype symbolizing innocent young girlhood. She was protected by her mother until she was kidnapped by Hades, who forced her into marriage. Since then, things in nature withered, and were only revived when Persephone returned to the world to reunite with her mother—an extreme symbol of regeneration and death. The artist incorporates her own life experiences into this archetype, stating that “fairytales and mythologies form a fictitious world mirroring reality. Through reading and creating that allow self-dialogues, one finds corresponding explanations of or ways to tease out different situations.”

The artist pushes herself to dive into the depth of her buried inner experiences to expand the unknown reachable to psychological perception into stories of the collective unconscious involving all of us. In Lupa’s words, The Unspoken Tales is her own version of One Thousand and One Nights told with quiet images—“I convert my indulgence in my own issues into an effort to offer healing and care for others.” The reason is because, no matter where we live or what generation we belong to, even if it is the remote shore of the unknown, we have probably all experienced the loneliness and isolation of self-exploration, along with the longing to pursue and achieve something.

Through the lens of human understanding and empathy, Lupa delineates the spatial-temporal scenes in which dream/reality, the abstract/the concrete, and present/past/future all become imbricated limitlessly. According to her, her purpose is “to enable those who feel what I have felt, who tend to suddenly wonder why they are at where they are in life to become aware and accept the situation without feeling alone,” said Lupa, with a smile on her face, “because here is someone feeling exactly like you.”