The soul chair
what carries a human?
The "soul chair" is the result of a reflection on what it takes to carry the weight of a human being. I wanted to take a step away from the objects that physically carries us — like chairs and stools — and rather think about what it is that carries us in everyday life. This opened for a broader discussion. I believe that the soul and our inner life is a big part of what carries us through life, and after researching on Plato’s Allegory of the cave, I decided to make a chair for the soul.
Plato said that all sensory impressions we receive are only shadow images of the real reality, the reality of ideas. This other reality is — even though it cannot be sensed — not just more real, and more fundamental, but also more important than the sensible reality. So let us say that the soul belongs to the reality of ideas, and the chair itself (the one we see the shadow of) also belongs there. But we who can only see the sensible world therefore only see the shadow. The shadow image I created indicates that you could call what you see a chair, but the construction is in our reality only 3 sticks with a few pieces on it. In the same way that I perceive you as a human being, but I cannot see your soul and what makes you you.