**Unit 3** Tentacular thinking - staying with the trouble

The tentacular are not disembodied figures; they are cnidarians, spiders, fingery beings like humans and raccoons, squid, jellyfish, neural extravaganzas, fibrous entities, flagellated beings, myofibril braids, matted and felted microbial and fungal tangles, probing creepers, swelling roots, reaching and climbing tendrilled ones. The tentacular are also nets and networks, it critters, in and out of clouds. Tentacularity is about life lived along lines — and such a wealth of lines — not at points, not in spheres. “The inhabitants of the world, creatures of all kinds, human and non-human, are wayfarers”; generations are like “a series of interlaced trails.”

(Haraway, 2016)

This mind-mapping shows how the elements / characters of my works relate.

After having a tutorial with Anna, I realised how to approach to my series of work and how to develop my jumble ideas.

Basically, I do not need to determine what the works mean. However I must recognise resisting meaning does not mean not having any meaning. Then, what should I do to give some references to viewers? Once I call my painting as "Fantasy", audiences would consider it as a sort of fantasy. Then, do I seriously resist this kind of meaning? In what way can I call them? Do I need to call them? As indeed, I mainly refused sexual reading of my work despite my peers' point of view. I even wrote about sexuality on my 2000 word research paper, but still I am not sure whether sexuality reaches out my entire works or not. Well, I do guess the sexuality is one of the parts that constructs some of my painting imagery. I also assume that painting sexuality can be a crucial way to show how I think about 'something'. That means, if I find 'something' that can be a basis of my entire ideas and works, painting genitals would be one of the routes to say 'something.' So, I would say my studio practice is all related to that 'Something'. In this way, my floating imagery (such as jellyfish, genitals, cloud-like, dream-like) and my bright colour field as well as solid crystal ball could be "clue" of the "something".

Like Haraway said, gestural marks of mine are all connected.

SO, the pinkish hues and brightness, less dark colour palette allow me think of ...sth..

And, the flowing forms make me think of sth..