What happens when cultural fiction ceases to be a representation and begins to function as a person’s psychological infrastructure? Here, the puppet is a metaphor for a person whose identity emerges from the intertwining of cultural narratives, algorithmic systems, collective affects, and pop-cultural representations. 

The work Where Did It All Go Wrong :X operates at the intersection of contemporary affect theory and posthumanism, asking how a person today becomes a subject through fictional images. It then examines the fictional character as both a cultural reference and a medium through which the subject organizes their own emotions, moral dilemmas, and sense of existence. It works with myth as a set of symbols to which we can relate on the border between the real and the unreal.

The character, inspired by a figure from Japanese anime series, is a product of contemporary secular post-post-internet mythology. Through this character, the artist demonstrates that every great moral aspiration carries with it a multilayered web of relationships, injustices, and responsibilities toward those close to us.

The figure behind the glass is motionless, even though it is held upright by steel cables that resemble a puppeteer’s strings. It interacts with the glass—and thus with the passing (random) audience—but merely holds out an open palm; it cannot offer a closer connection. Stainless steel is a strong material that can be bent into various shapes without breaking. Is it possible to go through the cycle of pain and remain unbroken*?