Echo Teohar

Untitled

2020

By the summer of 2020 I began to dream with more frequency. The themes of my dreams seemed to feed from the neuroses I had developed in response to COVID-19. It has never been easy for me to sleep. However, the exhaustion, which accumulated from re-learning my daily routine in the context of quarantine, allowed me a deep, fitful sort of sleep. The dreams that came to me felt unremarkable, at first. Slow-motion exercises in natural disaster response, the loss of my teeth, etcetera; typical anxiety dreams, as was to be expected.

One dream caught my attention recently. While the narrative of it is not too important to me, the imagery was dense and rich. I have decided to elevate the parts that are visually interesting to me. While the visuals I have chosen are common and archetypal, I can’t help but find charm in processing them as part of my visual practice. The resulting images resemble caricatures, or mascots, and it becomes easier to relate to them, or project onto them. This process of simplification is comforting to me.