Hug

Self Incarceration, 2022, Screen Print on 350gsm Candy Pink Colourplan Paper, 42mc x 59.4cm, Print

Self Incarceration

In Self Incarceration, freedom is visible but not necessarily reachable. At the centre of the work is what LUAP describes as human caged potential, the idea that fear, trauma and our own internal states can restrict what feels possible even when a route forward remains open.

Developed within the cells of a former police station, psychological confinement takes physical form. The Pink Bear stands inside a cell holding a cage, surrounded by real barbed wire, yet the door remains open. The contradiction is deliberate. The work is not about there being no escape, but about the distance between an exit existing and feeling able to take it.

The Community Chest works extend this idea through the familiar logic of a board game. Depression, insomnia and panic attacks can send the player backwards, while rest, affection and human connection allow movement forward. Chance and circumstance become part of the structure, reflecting a life that does not progress neatly or entirely through choice.

Humour runs through these darker experiences without diminishing them. Therapy becomes a financial penalty, a hug a reward, and complicated emotional states are compressed into the blunt instructions of a game. Restriction and possibility remain present at the same time, leaving the harder question of what keeps us confined and what might allow movement to begin again.