Forbidden Fruit: James Reka
Ask yourself the question - would you have partaken in the Forbidden Fruit?
The fruit that was forbidden in the Garden of Eden. The apple on the tree of knowledge, of good and evil. Used as a metaphor, for indulgence or pleasure, that is considered illegal or immoral. The human condition is one bound by an almost limitless scale of opportunity and stimuli. We live in a world of relentless temptation, where the primary drivers of life; hunger, safety and passion, are intertwined in a morally defined structure of our everyday existence – we are constantly responding to these urges and drives, as our actions create an eternal juxtaposition, between satisfying the primal needs of life, enjoying the fruits of our existence and the balance of morality.
This exhibition, represents a broadening of my aesthetic, reaffirming the dichotomy between morality and sin. In this language, my work provides an account of the reaction that has long governed discussion on tasting the Forbidden Fruit. Consideration of our mortality plunges us into the rediscovery of self and paradoxically, into facing challenges of self, sometimes threatening, in the presence of sincere and pure truths. Uncontrollable urges abound where all is only sin and temptation. These primal forces bring forth all the complexity of human relations, where sex and seduction, attraction and desire, degradation, and self-destruction, all symbolise tasting the “Forbidden fruit”.
