OPINION: Persona. Umbra. Imperium.

In our world, where news changes with lightning speed and collective consciousness seems fragmented into countless pieces, images become a language capable of connecting the personal with the collective, the conscious with the unconscious. As an artist and analyst, I use the image to express processes taking place not only within myself but also in the world around me.

One of the central elements of my image is the hat. The hat casts a shadow on the face and has long been known as a symbol of power. Through this artifact, I raise themes of the collective unconscious, the “Shadow” and the “Persona,” described by Erich Neumann in his research.

I created my hat from newspaper pages — stitched together reports of the First World War and today’s war of Russia against Ukraine. The crown of the hat bears the outline map of Ukraine from the time of the First World War. This gesture is an act of uniting historical memory and the present, the collective and the personal.

The illusory identification of Western man, based on positive values and the repression of the Shadow, became especially widespread in the bourgeois era. The belief in progress, rationality, and scientific knowledge – while ignoring the dark side of human nature – turned out to be one of the precursors of catastrophe: the First World War. History has repeatedly shown us how the pursuit of the “ideal” often carries within itself the charge of human complexes, which ultimately manifest in forms of tyranny.

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Today, we are once again witnesses to something similar. A primitive society, instead of acknowledging its Shadow, projects it outward – creating an external enemy. Thus, the mechanism repeats itself, one familiar since the time of myths and wars.

The “Shadow” and the “Persona” describe the system of a person’s striving toward an ethical ideal. The Persona is the mask behind which the individual hides from both the self and the world. It serves a social function, but the loss of connection with the inner Self makes it dangerous. If the Shadow remains unconscious, it begins to live its own life, and eventually destroys the illusion of the Persona.

To change the collective future, we must reach the level of personality development through recognition of our own Shadow and its true nature. One of the instruments of such recognition is creativity. For it offers a way of thinking in which the symbol carries deep energy. Through visual imagery or music, one can express what words cannot convey – what the psyche holds within and longs to have seen and heard.

The hat on my head is not just a decorative object. It is a symbol: within it lies power, shadow, history, memory. It is an act of visual thinking that addresses the part of us that understands not through logic but through deep inner perception. Light is the best projector of shadow. And only the one who is able to see it has a chance not to repeat the past.

The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.