metanarratives

Met·a·nar·ra·tive: A narrative account that experiments with or explores the idea of storytelling, often by drawing attention to its own artificiality. From technique to subject, this collection rearranges a variety of narratives which are based on both fact and fiction. By juxtaposing and recontextualizing various of Jonatas Chimen's staple subjects from his writings and studio practice, this dystopian collection brings to light the importance of allegory, folklore, and myth as catalysts for growth and enlightenment. Meant to be open-ended and non-specific in subject matter, each of these paintings first start on a copper plate, which then goes through an etching press, and later reveals a monotype on paper. Only then are the figures collaged onto canvases in an aleatory manner, creating a series of unscripted narratives. Central to the series is this process of moving from surface to surface, as it symbolises the process of story-telling, myth-making, and identity-formation, as true constructs.