The artwork itself is a product of the Surrealism Movement and presented in an explicit way. The main subject in the drawing is a ghost which has been transformed into a spiritual creature. A head on a rotten spine, hands floating in the air while the prestidigitation of eyeballs is happening with blood all around. The eye balls are yet to detach from the hollow eyes but still connected by a glasses string of mine, an iconic feature when people think of me. And that is a self portrait of myself with a strong imagery contrast.

As a dreamer, I always like to look at unreal things as they seem to be harmless, cause they are not real and can not hurt me back. Therefore, Surrealism is an ideal movement to pursue. The movement itself encourages people to have a new world outlook. As a result, people’s ideologies will change and society will change. But unlike the father of Surrealism, Andre Breton or the famous Surrealist Dali whose works are bright and look like they came from a dream, viewers can tell my work came from a nightmare. The last few weeks I thought a lot about death after my grandfather’s demise: people telling each other to live properly so they will not die in regret, shame and sorrow; how people always say they are not ready to die or see others die. Fear of death has penetrated deeply into the society standard, especially Asian societies. The fact is, according to Cozzolino (2014), people are only afraid of death when they see no meaning or an ideal in life. They have no self-realization, self-esteem or a purpose. They are so far from the reality that they do not even know what is past, present or future, what comes first and what comes after. That is why when thinking they are becoming older and their time has gone a bit, they are scared and again, keep feeling crisis and forever stuck in the loopholes. The drawing is me personally being sarcastic about this by saying “I am dead and I am making fun of death. I look fearful and disgusting while making fun of death which people are disgusted about.

The facial proportion is semi-realistic and childlike, while the creepy smile and the empty eye holes does not show any innocence which a child should have. I have encountered millions of times how people think I am younger than my age without them knowing my naive and carefree mind has long gone. I look at the world as it is black. And now, with an older self, I have learned to laugh back at the downfall of it (the evil smile). The clown- inspired look originates from the stereotype of a clown laughing all the time, like crazy, like a maniac. So I look psychopathic enough that I am not afraid of death anymore. The trick of playing with eyeballs to perform is a witty way to say “only when I am dead that I can do this”, an action people can not do when they are alive. The blood is a way of irritating people when I force them to look at me. It takes inspiration from film: the eyeball slashed with a razor in the opening moments of Un Chien andalou and the horror surreal movie In My Skin by Marina de Van, in which the character slowly cut her skin and let the blood drop on her eyes. The spine bone is without a body or even ribs. This is it when people die, they may have nothing left but an unidentified appearance. Lastly is the sky. Surrealists tend to be obsessed with the sky as there is always sunset, midday sky or blue ones or any type of landscapes involved in their paintings. My sky is very dark and apocalyptic. Thus, this is the afterlife and there may be no heaven or beautiful grassland waiting for us. However, personally I do not think people should be feared by it. The ugly is the ugly, the beauty is the beauty, depends on how people look at it. And

there are nothing wrong with looking at it in an ugly way if people choose to. People are only scared since they do not know what is ahead of them. Therefore, while they are still living, having a purpose, searching for an ideology to stick to, knowing who they are and having a choice of how to look at things in their own perspective, is the message I am trying to encode in my self-portrait.