This ambiguity is perhaps the most important metaphor in the work: we cannot always distinguish which tears come from what is happening before us, and which arise from a deeper sorrow accumulated over time. Through this, I wanted to reflect on the uncertainty of life and on the inescapable relationship between human beings and suffering. An observer may judge whether someone’s sorrow is “justified,” yet can never truly know what that person is experiencing. Only we know the warmth and coldness of our own lives—not because the world is incapable of understanding us, but because every form of suffering acquires its true weight only through being lived. In La naissance de la tragédie, tragedy is not necessarily born from some grand catastrophe. It may emerge from the most ordinary of moments—a single onion, a single tear, and a person standing alone, in a place no one else can inhabit for them, quietly experiencing the weight of their own existence.

Provenance

Created in the artist’s Paris studio in 2017, this work is painted in traditional oil paint, in a antique frame, and presented in an antique frame. It has been exhibited in Paris.