Cube

Cube examines the inadequacy of metaphors in representing illness and disease. With its simple title, Cube imitates the way metaphors over simplify illness and the experience of illness, and the actual multimedia project acts as a physical depiction of the idea that illness cannot be contained by metaphors. The installation takes the shape of a lighted box, with four sides that represent metaphors trying to contain the ‘illness’, or light, which escapes through cut-outs and gaps in the paintings.

Like Sontag’s work, it is rather ironic that in the end metaphors (using light to represent ‘illness’) still have to be used in this project, and perhaps the eventual conclusion viewers should have is that we are unable to escape the grasp of metaphorical language.