Index Mei: the index of me.
In old Roman parchments, an index was not just a tally of pages. It was a promise that every heading within could be found, opened, and lived. I borrow that lineage for a portrait that is less a face than a catalogue of signs. An inventory of symbols arranged so anyone, now or after I am dust, can trace the path I walked, feel the waves I felt, and touch the things I left glowing in the dark.
This figure is not a portrait of a person, but of a condition. It has no name, no gender, no faith. It stands for me, for you, for anyone who’s ever paused to wonder what they are made of. As impossible as it is to draw the universal human, this is my attempt: a body stripped to form and symbol, carrying marks instead of labels. It is an archetype, not of perfection but of presence.
The unalterable geometry of being human. Like the construction lines of a preparatory sketch, its bars mark the start and finish points baked into our linear design: we breathe, we see, we end. Those same lines give form and proportion. They hold the code of our nature; forged in a god’s image, yet stubbornly, disappointingly human.
The weights life fastens from the outside. Each link is a moment: a loss, a promise, a fracture, a fire. Some corrode and vanish, some must be broken, some we polish and keep. But all alter the way the body carries itself. They press into the skin, leaving behind scars, some healed, some raw, and a topography of memory written in flesh.
The stillness before motion. Green is inertia, laziness, the default setting of a body at rest. It’s not imposed; it’s chosen. Unlike the cage or the chain, this limit can be changed. The green skin holds the potential for yellow, for orange, for blue. But until movement happens, it waits.