Self and Spectacle

I do not paint pigs.
I rearrange a hallucination built from them.
He resembles me. He mocks me. He is exhibited in my place.

The pig is a rare emblem where fortune and disgrace share a single outline.
It circulates as a charm of prosperity,
but functions equally as a vessel for cultural shame.
It is cute, filthy, abundant, foolish.
Minhwa compresses these contradictions into a flat ornamental plane.

I do not restage the plane. I rupture it.
The pig is not an icon.
He is a structure of projected emotion.
He absorbs the affect others assign to me
and performs a version of the self I never authored.
He is not a character but a surface.
A container for shame, inflation, paralysis, defense, imitation.
A visual device to hold what could not be spoken.

He does not speak.
Because no one ever intended him to.
He was made to react, not respond.

I paint only the moment when that reaction fails.
When the surface ruptures under the weight of performance.
When the mask refuses its own outline.