Parabola 01, Bowstring Tension

This work captures a figure crouched low to the ground, drawing a bow with taut tension. It does not merely reenact hunting or combat, but visualizes the structural logic underlying the act of throwing. The drawn string embodies an accumulation of force and potential energy; it is at once the physical point of trajectory and a metaphor for social and historical experience.

Within the context of Parabola, this action is read as a visualization of the “logic of projection.” Throwing is not simply a bodily gesture—it has historically evolved from stones to arrows to missiles, forming a continuous topology of violence. This photograph embodies a fragment of that logic: the body pressed into the grass becomes the locus of force, compelling viewers to confront the process of tension and latent violence.

The image is less about the “release” than the suspended moment of drawing—the critical threshold before discharge. This suspension demands reflection: how does the logic of violence exist even before it is enacted, and how does it continue to shape our understanding of the body, power, and memory across history and the present?

2025