This is a short (1 min: 5 sec) film that showed tonight at the Voices Breaking Boundaries art event/artists’ talk ‘What’s Color Got To Do With It?’ about love and culture. The topic threw up a lot of questions for me: what is love and are the differences/similarities due to culture, eras, or gender? I was inspired by the old Chinese legend of The Butterfly Lovers which tells the story of two people who were forbidden to marry, so they threw themselves into a grave and emerged as two butterflies to be together forever. I was interested that this romantic idea of love has so many similarities to the Western idea of love, of all-consuming passionate, true love. The butterflies I cut from an Asian newspaper and an American romance novel and is in reference to the Chinese paper cutting craft technique which often is of butterfly shapes. The symbolism of butterflies that I refer to in my paintings (metamorphosis, hidden strength, mortality) carry through to the paper shapes.

The music was composed and performed  for the film, by a very talented young man, Jacob, who is a mere 9 years-old. Thanks Jacob, for collaborating with me!

Thanks to Kafah Bachari Manna for inviting me to take part, and all the VBB people for providing the forum.