Creating Yin Yang, Part 2: "Yang’s Dark Circle"

"Whilst creating my Yang I was really immersed in all that makes this life so beautiful and wonderful and memorable, and I was met with great appreciation for the life I was fortunate to be born into. This is an example of the power of Art in my beliefs. However, whilst bringing this idea to life I had to be constantly vigilant of the fact that I had more than half of the piece left to do, and I was met with the realisation that everything I was drawing now would soon be met with its opposite on my Yin side, and that was unexpectedly daunting... "

If you haven’t already, check out the first blog in this series, titled "Creating Yin Yang, Part1: "Yang”. This provides an insight to the initial planning stages and how I constructed a basis from which to formulate my ideas, and will aid you in understanding the following blog post.

*Please note the following blog post contains sensitive information that can be confronting for some readers*

Perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of creating this piece was figuring out which idea belonged in which section of the Yin Yang. Naturally, given that I live in a traditional Western-based society- being Australia- majority of the ideas that made up my Yang (light side) reflected the positive, opportunistic aspects of life that Western society is made up of. Things such as travel, leisure, music, education, medicine, etc. With this in mind I had to decide on ideas to fill Yang’s Dark Circle, which is labelled as "the bad within the good". This meant I would have to dissect the ideas I had incorporated into my Yang and decide on what their consequential opposites would be. For example, in my planning I had come up with the idea of drawing a "FOR SALE" sign with a "SOLD" sticker across it to represent the milestone of buying a home. Whilst this in itself is considered a great achievement and solid example of opportunity and freedom, it doesn’t come without a cost, and due to the concept of the Yin Yang being that there is no good without bad and vice versa, I had to come up with a way to represent that. This is the basis on which this piece’s entire content would adhere to. This posed a challenge in itself because I still had to draw the Yin (dark) side, which would include what I believe to be some of the worst aspects of life on Earth, yet still find the good within that, without conflicting between whether they belonged in the Circles, or the very Yin or Yang themselves.

My approach to tackle this challenge was to use my references from my Yang side and decide on what could be the potential consequence of having all of these wonderful opportunities. I started with what I believe is one of society’s biggest causes of grief: money. Majority of what I had chosen to create in my Yang side would not be possible without money, and this is an aspect of human life that every person on every continent is aware of- in fact an aspect that most of us are either struggling or obsessed with. Money is a perfect candidate to represent the notion of good and bad, it’s the ultimate paradox. The best way I could represent this was by drawing a man in a business suit to imply that of a working class man, hunched over with this head in his hands, insinuating loss, stress, grief and angst- all emotions that we as humans can experience due to the necessity of money. To further add to this idea I drew an opened envelope with a letter peering out with the capitalised word in bold: OVERDUE. As adults, especially those in Western society, know exactly how this word makes us feel. It implies financial pressure and strain.

As I left my late teens and entered my twenties, venturing into the unknown territory of adulthood I experienced a lot of emotions associated with the expectations of building a successful life in society, especially in modern day 2021 when we have access to incredible technology at our finger tips. I am no stranger to the darker side of modern society’s stressful implications, and was surprised at how easy it was for me to come up with ideas to represent this.

With all of the possibilities we are exposed to we can do amazing things with our lives, such as travelling, dining at restaurants, splurging on expensive accommodation, grandiose weddings and so much more, and we are unlikely to either find or be someone who chooses not to share all of these fantastic things we do on social media. It makes us feel important, valued, gives the impression that we are happy and successful, but at the core of it all we choose to only share a small portion of our typically ordinary lives with the rest of the world. This has a serious detrimental effect on us as we know this about ourselves, yet continue to compare our lives with those who seem to be doing more and who seem to have it all figured out. We have become dependant on how many likes we get because not only do we associate that number with how valued and important and liked we are, subconsciously many of us judge others by the same means. Not to mention the detrimental impact this has on things such as our children and their relationship with society, and our ability to decipher whether we are doing something for the pure joy of experiencing it, or to try and prove something to the rest of the world. This is why I chose to draw a phone screen with the words "YOUR LIFE HERE", as well as the iconic symbol for the "likes" notification that all millennials will recognise, and used the number "44", my brother’s lucky number.

In pursuit of keeping consistent with the ideas I was choosing to draw in my Dark Circle of Yang I wanted to build more on the influence of technology- which also includes the media. As we work tirelessly to put on a facade that we live these glamorous lives in order to feel accepted by our communities the media adds fuel to the flame by advertising expensive cars that will gain us the most respect, clothes that are overpriced but somehow justified by the brand name they possess, it promotes a very particular body image for people to aspire to, celebrities endorsing meaningless lifestyles, cheap, "tried and tested" dieting products to "help us achieve our weight goals"- the list is endless. It was a challenge to represent this idea, especially in such a small space and keeping in mind I had to fit in a lot more. Eventually I came up with the idea to draw a magnifying glass over the word "MEDIA", and I feel this speaks for itself. It implies a sense of mystery, investigation, crime- words that I personally believe some parts of modern day society‘s media platforms are guilty of in some way.

I was in grade 7 (twelve years old) when I began having issues with my own body image. I was an ‘early bloomer’, and was developing before my peers, so I became self conscious early on as I had no reference of "normal". I had grown up with the early 2000’s Pop Scene as my means of entertainment and had been shown a very specific standard of body that I assumed I would naturally mature into. When I began to gain weight in certain areas and not in others I began to call myself fat. I entered high school and compared myself to every single girl at my school. I would go all day without eating for fear of being known as "the fat girl", then binge eat when I got home. I quickly gained weight and the acne soon followed. I grew even more self conscious and struggled to manage my Diabetes. I bought countless diet pills, continued starving myself in public then gorging myself when I got home. I was obsessed with staring at myself in the mirror, picking out all of my "flaws" that didn’t fit society’s ideal of beauty. At the age of fifteen I was 160cm tall and weighed almost 90kg. I would cry in my room every night, go for runs around the neighbourhood at night so that I wouldn’t be seen, even contemplated how much pain it would cause me to physically cut the fat from my thighs. From the image that society portrayed as beautiful and normal was born an incredibly ill, self conscious young girl who developed an eating disorder that still affects her today. To represent this, I drew the faint impression of a human rib cage buried deep in the background, hiding, almost out of sight.

Due to the contrasting concept of Yin Yang I was paying attention to the ideas I was drawing for my Yang and how I could counteract them with their opposites, and one that came to mind was the very lack thereof these aspects. What life is like for those living within this society who don’t have access to education, healthy families and relationships, health care. Drug and substance abuse is prolific amongst the society I live in. I have bared witness to it in many forms from many people- some who I’ve never met, some who are very close to me. The reliance on substance- both medicinal and recreational- has potentially lifelong consequences and I wanted to represent this in a way that is not too confronting and obvious, but still portrays the message. I chose to draw a rested human hand, implying it was unconscious on the floor, stained with marks and dirty fingernails, a pill bottle barely in its grasp and pills falling out. This piece can behold a variety of meanings, and it is completely up to you with how you choose to perceive it; drug addiction, reliance on pharmaceuticals, over-prescription, diet culture, a devastating attempt to end it all. The cigarette also shares a similar meaning- the fact that we live in a society where the world is at our feet, but the bittersweet demon of temptation and addiction is never far from our fingertips.

Designing and planning "Yang’s Dark Circle" was very different to the actual creation. I had a rough idea of the concepts and facets of life I wanted to portray, but when it came time to bring it to fruition I was thrown into a rather negative plane of thought that unintentionally brought up parts of my own psyche that is difficult to think about, let alone portray. Art has always been a safe place for me to go when life has become hard, it has always provided me with a home to go to that allows me to take my mind away from whatever is troubling me. This was the first time I was drawing something that was not considered "beautiful" or aesthetically pleasing, and it was definitely confronting. It was at this point when I began to question whether I was out of my league, whether what I was creating was becoming too messy and hard to follow. Was it too political? Too much of a taboo? Would it cause controversy? Would it be triggering? I had a lot of doubt for the upcoming Yin side, because as confronting as Yang’s Dark Circle was, it was nothing in comparison to what I had in mind for Yin...

Please read "Creating Yin Yang, Part 3: "Yin" to follow the process of creating this piece.

Until next time, keep creating. -Madeline x