Fiona Deutsch

My works are meant to represent the abstract concepts elucidated in the Seven Deadly Sins as real-world issues to bring a sense of relatability to the audience. My vision for this body of work was to put real world issues into a context that is easy for people to associate with to soften the harsh reality of these issues and make the audience more willing to be receptive to the messages of each piece and the exhibition as a whole. As such concepts as pride, envy, and greed are ones that everyone has experienced, I hope my audience will reflect on how these concepts impact our everyday lives. I want to demonstrate how the “Seven Deadly Sins” are prevalent in our society, though not necessarily in a religious sense. I believe the ignorance and neglect of these issues is the “sin” and that the concepts I demonstrated with Pride, Wrath, Envy, Greed, Gluttony, Sloth, and Lust are simply problems that as a society we need to acknowledge and face head on. I want the audience to listen to the stories I am telling through each work, and reflect on their own lives and how these issues affect them, which is something that they might be unwilling to do in a different context.

The real-life issues I’ve addressed in my pieces are situations I’ve encountered in the world around me. I decided to combine these issues with the Seven Deadly Sins, however, to emphasize the importance and intensity of how these issues affect people worldwide and hopefully represent a broad and cultural worldview. I explored these concepts with different art mediums to try and capture the essence of each sin as it intersected with a cultural issue. Most of my pieces are 2-Dimensional; this choice was intentional because I wanted full control over the way the textures and colors appeared. I also put a lot of thought into my color schemes and how they played into the interpretation of the works and the audience's view of them. While each work represents a pressing societal matter, I also drew from my experiences growing up as a young woman in a patriarchal society, and how rape culture inserts itself into the way children are socialized, even from a young age. I also drew inspiration from my experiences struggling with mental health especially during quarantine. My pieces on pride and envy were contextualized through social media and growing up surrounded by images dictating how I ought to look, dress, and what products I should use, as these messages bleed into my everyday habits, even when I am not conscious of it. The rest of my pieces are drawn more from the perspective of growing up in Gen-Z and understanding that the fate of the world will be forced into the hands of my generation as the older generations fail to address critical issues such as the climate catastrophe, impacting the fate of our world, and the fact that we will be unable to make progress as long as people refuse to acknowledge the severity of these problems.

I composed my works in a circular arrangement with my Sin piece at the center and the rest of the pieces surrounding it. I want the audience to begin in the middle and consider my definition of sin and how it compares with their understanding of sin. From there the circular composition invites the audience to move wherever they want and follow the circle around. I also chose a circular arrangement so that all pieces were placed equidistant and no singular issue was weighted above the other, as I think that every issue has its own merit. As one follows the circle, the viewer inevitably encounters each individual issue, just as they would encounter them in real life. Above all I wanted the audience to feel the gravity of each situation through my art, even if their real-world experience with them is minimal. I hope my art will allow them to enter into an understanding of each issue, so that they can reflect on where they arise in their own lives and make changes accordingly.