Inspired by Ay-O’s Mystery Box and Yoko Ono’s performance art piece Cut Piece, Emancipation of the Mind explores the question of how much societal conformity could influence or hamper one's path to understand their sense of self, and how creativity plays a role in that, in conjunction to the idea of reconnecting with the inner child, openly approaching thoughts that are typically considered unconventional and quirky, and physically executing them by embracing creativity as an aid along the process.
At first glance, the model looks like a brain being upheld by a dark, mysterious-looking box. The ideas, however, being suppressed on the inside, contained within the brain waiting for a moment of release. Once the brain is open up (“becoming more open-minded”), one could find that attached are thoughts/ ideas that are not necessarily conventional, practical or typical. Strings intertwining as a visual representation of the complex relationship between each thought and how these thoughts seem to blend into one another. The interior of the brain (the black box) is filled with negativity and harmful comments, and by all means stand for the complete opposite of the strings of ideas attached to the brain; the negative, intrusive thoughts are "written" onto the mind like poisonous vines all over it and are hard to brush off. But despite the brain containing both negativity but also so much creativity — the negativity is not likely to disappear (inherent) but it could be countered with a more open approach to one's ideas and “thinking outside of the box” to try out new things.
