A painting of us.

• Main Author: Nuraliah Norasid.
• Other Authors: Daniel Keith Jernigan
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Literature::English
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/15175
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

As the common adage goes, a picture speaks a thousand words. A picture, unlike a person, cannot produce sounds on their own. To speak, as in to utter sounds, requires either the right devices or the right anatomy, neither of which a picture has. If someone speaks to you in a language you do not understand, the person is still “speaking” as he or she is able to carry out our common understanding of speaking. It is not so with a picture. A picture only “speaks” if the one who “listens”, understands. Otherwise, the picture remains mute. It becomes complicated when a picture conceals another picture. To get to the other picture, hoping to hear it “speak”, one must mute the picture that conceals it through destruction. However, the act of muting one picture can only serve to mute the other as well. If that happens what is one left with? Lina is someone important to Nelson, and when she died, all he has left are her paintings, all of which conceals another below it. The narrative begins like one of sweet childhood love, but as the paintings get destroyed one by one in Nelson’s search for something he thought he had missed, so does the love story. When that happens what are we left with?