MediumAcrylic, sand, Chinese lacquer (大漆), and gold leaf on canvas
Size30 × 40 in
Concept
Deradicalization is a large mixed-media painting. I begin by flooding the surface with uncontrollable black paint, then work slowly on top of it — building texture with sand, layering color, and drawing line after line in Chinese lacquer and gold leaf, letting the patterns generate and settle into form on their own. What you see is that movement made visible: a dark, eruptive ground, and over it a living web of gold lines that cross, meet, and keep growing. The painting moves from an emotional outburst I cannot govern toward an order I build by hand.
I think of an extreme opinion as a line drawn dead in advance — fixed, forbidden to deviate. The mind in distress hardens the same way: black-and-white thinking, the loop that won't release, the conviction that reaches its conclusion first and then hunts for proof. I first heard this rigidity not in others but in my own younger voice. The work isn't an accusation; it's self-examination — a curiosity about what it takes to soften.
Deradicalization, for me, is emotional processing. It never means erasing the darkness — the black ground stays. It means continuing to grow on top of it.