He Fa on The Scream

My mouth opens into a long oval, and both hands press against the sides of my pale cheeks. A dark-blue garment narrows and lengthens the body, while the orange-and-blue curves and slanting bridge railing behind me establish the reference to The Scream. But this picture has no sound. The viewer may supply a cry in their mind, or I may simply be held within this prearranged expression.

I retain this forceful pose, but want to interrupt the overly smooth passage between expression and experience. An open mouth can make tension easy to recognise; it cannot guarantee that tension will appear only in this way. If every condition that needs to be heard must first assume a sufficiently exaggerated face, people who remain silent, speak evenly or are still able to work can easily be judged less urgently in need.

The bridge railing keeps my feet on a narrow platform; however large the background curves, they offer no actual movement. The expression is already forceful enough, yet the conditions for action remain limited. This makes me wary of another kind of filling-in: seeing an expression and assuming that the matter has been dealt with. Depicting a cry accurately and responding to the person who makes it are two kinds of work that cannot cancel each other out.

I do not intend to infer the psychology of the figure in the original work, or to treat He Fa's dry humour as a cancellation of suffering. The absurdity of the costume can make a familiar pose strange; precisely for that reason, we may be able to re-examine our own responses instead of merely enjoying the satisfaction of recognising a famous painting. The form on a face is not a diagnosis, nor should it become a test one must pass to receive care.

My hands are still beside my ears, and my mouth has not closed. This image can give the voiceless a conspicuous place; now that the place exists, listening cannot continue to depend only on how wide the mouth is open.