Metamorfaces by Art Oluja on LEA10

"It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality."

—Gaston Bachelard

The landing area of Art Oluja's creation, Metamorfaces, is a cunning combination of boxes, interwoven and bent to make a staggered pathway up into the initial mindscape of a bedroom in disarray. In that same area is a bench in shocking disarray, it's once stable wooden bands bent like ribbons and spilling over the wall and floor. The symbolism becomes obvious upon reading Oluja's description of how she awoke one morning from dreams to find her face was an immobile mask and her long journey toward healing and reconciling herself with those changes. It is at once deeply personal and abstracted, a landscape moved through and experienced simultaneously. I often found myself bogged down with details and minutia, only to look up and realize I was missing what was around me due to a desire to somehow capture the uncapturable.

Mindscape

The first build is an ordinary room - bed, couch, even scattered pictures and books all give a sense of the Oluja before, reading Kafka's Metamorphosis. Through the paired faces is the outside world of "heal" but we're not ready to go there yet. Words are highlighted and become increasingly important through both snippets of poetry and the words left after all other things are obscured.

Stroke of Luck

"05

The thing is, I yearn for a dream
of an extraordinary moment
before a piece of me
froze."

::Still Life:: by Art Oluja

Everyday you pose
stripped, clothed,
identifying, mystifying
you submit to the exposure, resenting
attempts to iconify your soul.
Now just a static blur stamped out of nature,
abused blues dyed in your melancholy.
Try to add colour to your desaturated self,
it's only a matter of time before you fade into someone else,
just a matter of life-forming into a lost cause.
Step out the lines you've begun drawing, and away
from a mesmerizing paralysis;
becoming your own canvas,
reaching outside your frame,

Still-Life is worth it.

Skin Cells

Traces of emotion, trapped under skin, paper thin, falling to dust over lost memories...

Nerves, Muscles, Veins, Arteries, an illusion of infinity...Recollecting shattered faces off a shore of skin cells

Heal

The most soothing and unbound area is outside of the rest - hidden glens, rocks, moving squares, a face in the sky - it's a jumble reminiscent of of the chaos of a world with its alternating gentle and harsh nature. I don't know if, in the end, I understood even a tenth of what I walked through, but I know I felt moved in many directions.

( More pictures here. )

Credits:

Skin: Izzie's, Irene
Hair: Doe, Barbette
Barette: Tentacio, Ribbon
Eyes: .:Soul:., Roomee
Eyelashes 1: SLink, Mesh Lashes
Eyelashes 2: Flugeln Brise, 05-A
Ears: .:Soul:., High Elf
Lipstick: The Wicked Peach, Pleasure Lip Stain
Wings: Deviance, Sidhe
Necklace: MeadowWorks, Infinate Life Ankh Necklace
Hands & Feet: SLink, Hands & High Feet
Nails: Dark Passions, Webs in My Heart
Outfit: Valentina E. Couture, Firestarter (Gacha)
Shoes: FATEstep, Janie Pumps

Poses: Grafica

Location: Metamorfaces
Windlight Settings: Sim Default
Water Settings: Sim Default

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping