(Sep - Oct 2018)
Omitted, 2018. Coloured HD video, duration 00:05:17, size 1920:1080, 25 shots/sec.
Displayed at The archive and the contested landscape exhibition as part of the Cambridge festival of ideas, 2018, and during the Silver Jubilee celebration of Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Cambridge, 2018.
The video consists of short video clips put together in a collage. No story, no sound, no plot. The images repeat on the screen in an endless loop. This artwork's only purpose is to show those pictures repeatedly until the viewer sees each part of them. It is a reminder to watch the world around us, to be attentive and observant. However, as in actual daily life, the viewer is distracted by other images and the continuous change such that there is not enough time to look at each picture properly. Therefore, they have to wait for the next screening to focus on the details. Reading the Bible, attending liturgical services, and daily prayers work the same way. People must read/watch/say them repeatedly until they notice details and understand their meaning. So, observing nature is a practice for understanding religious rituals as well.
This approach communicated the Bible to both believers and people outside of Christianity in the same way. The collage of nature images was not composed as storytelling but instead a show of seemingly random pictures. The art project name Omitted, standing for "omitted biblical verses", did not reveal its religious background either. The whole video, visualising biblical verses pointing to nature, could be easily read as an ecological concern instead of a biblical 'lecture'. However, this artwork's purpose was not to hide the religious origin lying behind mutual interest; instead, it was primarily an attempt to point to the theme of the creation of which all people are part.