RA 14H39M37S DEC -60 50’ 2”
HUMANKIND BE VIGILANT; WE LOVED YOU.
© 2025, CHERYL CHARLI
The Curse & Catharsis of A Copper Mind (2023)
Costume elements used in film
3 short character vignettes films
The rise of contemporary society has brought upon the fall of gods.This artwork is a collective exploration of the nature of our relationship/s with belief. Premised on observations of the dualities existing within contemporary culture seen in the close proximity of traditional religious practices and various juxtaposing contemporary phenomena such as consumerism and capitalism, this work posits our world as a strange place in a time of liminalities and contrasts, where the boundaries separating spiritual sanctity from urban blight are blurred.
In liminal spaces whose vacancy parallels temples removed of spiritual or religious significance, this piece embodies a personal inner vacancy that twists worship into a dance of yearning. In this sanctified but shadowy place where the distance between where you are and what you long for gives rise to new desires and transactional modes of glorifying a god, the human heart surrenders and wills itself to do anything to bridge that distance and traverse the void.
At the heart of contemporary culture is a timeless amalgamation of yearning: yearning disguised as worship manifesting in different forms, sometimes offered to archetypal gods of tradition – religious deities and ancestors – but increasingly so to gods of modernity – fortune, status, and consumerism. These are gods that we place at the far end of the horizon and find ourselves drawing an unfollowable map towards finding. These are gods whose presence is made manifest by the very acts of worship offered to them by the street’s vendors, tourists, frequenters, and inhabitants.
Our world today is a place where gods are made and homed in transient sites where worship turns transaction and genuinity falls into shadow. Amidst its frivolous facades, in the hearts of non-believers, skeptics, and people simply passing through, the places we know so well transition into a strange, liminal planes where true religion is rendered archaic – a place where gods go to die.
ARTISTS
Koh Kai Ting, Cheryl Charli, Noyona Biswas, Seetharam Poorvaja, Ong Soo Nee
WATCH HERE
©2025 CHERYL CHARLI